Online Communities- Design, Theory, And Practice - Jenny Preece & Diane Maloney- Krichmar

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Online Communities: Design, Theory, and Practice

Jenny Preece College of Information Studies

University of Maryland

Diane Maloney-Krichmar Office of the PresidentBowie State University

Abstract

This special thematic section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings

together nine articles that provide a rich composite of the current research in online

communities. The articles cover a range of topics, methodologies, theories and practices.

Indirectly they all speak to design since they aim to extend our understanding of the

field. The variety shown in these articles illustrates how broad the definition is of this

rapidly growing field known as 'online communities.'

Introduction

Community has become the 'in-term' for almost any group of people who use

Internet technologies to communicate with each other. Depending on whether

one takes a social perspective or a technology perspective, online communitiestend to be named by the activity and people they serve or the technology that

supports them. For example the same community might be called a 'breast

cancer patient support community' and a 'bulletin board community.' There is

much angst about use of the term 'community,' especially when researchers

from a range disciplines come together, each wanting to place a stake in the

ground to support their own goals and research paradigm. Sociologists, social

psychologists and anthropologists are the guardians of the term but for more

than 50 years, they been have defining and redefining the concept of community

(Wellman, 1982).

Until the advent of telecommunications technology, definitions of community

focused on close-knit groups in a single location. Factors such as birth and

physical location determined belonging to a community. Interaction took place

primarily face-to-face; therefore, social relationships took place with a stable and



limited set of individuals (Gergen, 1997; Jones, 1997). This way of defining

community became less useful as the development of modern transportation and

telecommunication systems increased personal mobility and reduced the costs of

communicating across distances. Newcomers hankering after definitive

definitions, and failing to find them, created their own. Researchers now consider

the strength and nature of relationships between individuals to be a more useful

basis for defining community than physical proximity (Hamman, 1999;

Haythornthwaite & Wellman, 1998; Wellman, 1997; Wellman & Gulia, 1999a).

Pioneers of online community development and research Howard Rheingold(1993) and Roxanne Hiltz (1985) used the term 'online community' to connote

the intense feelings of camaraderie, empathy and support that they observed

among people in the online spaces they studied. Other researchers have

attempted to operationalize the term so that it is useful in the analysis, design,

and evaluation of community software platforms and management practices (de

Souza & Preece, 2004; Maloney-Krichmar & Preece, 2005; Preece, 2000). These

researchers focus on 'the people who come together for a particular purpose, and

who are guided by policies (including norms and rules) and supported

by software.' Others researchers have identified key parameters of community

life and then looked for their presence online.

However, as Amy Bruckman pointed out at a recent meeting "much ink has been

spilled trying to work out which online communities are really communities"(Bruckman, 2005). Bruckman proceeds to argue that expending energy and time

on developing definitions may not be the best way to proceed. She suggests that

a more productive approach may be to accept community as a concept with

fuzzy boundaries that is perhaps more appropriately defined by its membership.

This can be done by noting the similarities and differences of each new member

and comparing them with the characteristics of members who are regarded as

being within the community. In many respects this approach lends itself more



readily to the way most of us think about the communities that make up our

everyday lives. While such approaches to definition might be hard for some

academics to accept, they may encourage us to concentrate on more substantive

issues such as how communities are created, evolve or cease to exist online.

A related issue is 'how do we define community boundaries online?' 'Online

community' is a legacy term that is engrained in Internet culture. But

increasingly it is accepted that online communities rarely exist only online; many

have off-line physical components. Either they start as face-to-face communities

and then part or all of the community migrates on to digital media, orconversely, members of an online community seek to meet face-to-face.

Communication is hardly ever restricted to a single medium; usually several

media are used depending on what is most convenient at the time, which can

make doing research in this field difficult. Populations tend not to be bounded, so

getting a clear picture of the community's context can be difficult, and sampling

is tricky and prone to error.

In order to study online communities, researchers have had to adapt

methodologies for use online. Ethnography was used by many early researchers

(Baym, 1993, 2000; Hine, 2000) to try to understand issues such as what people

do in online spaces, how they express themselves, what motivates them, how

they govern themselves, what attracts people to participate, and why some

people prefer to observe rather than contribute. Ethnography was an obviouscandidate for developing a broad understanding of online behavior within

particular contexts. Content and linguistic analysis techniques were modified for

analyzing computer-mediated communication (Herring, 1992, 2004) and social

network analysis (Wellman & Gulia, 1999a, 1999b) was also applied to online

populations, often supported by visualizations that enable researchers to view

the network from different perspectives (Sack, 2000). A variety of other creative

and innovative visualization techniques have emerged more recently that enable



researchers to see and explore community activity at a glance, such as a tool

called history flow which reveals the chronology of authorship in wikipedia

(Vi�gas, Wattenberg, & Dave, 2004). Online interviews and questionnaires are

also fundamental tools for online community research, despite problems

associated with drawing scientific samples and low response rates (Andrews,

Nonnecke, & Preece, 2003). Data logging has also been popular.

Just as researchers have borrowed and adapted methods for online work,

theories from long-standing traditional research fields have also been applied in

online community research, as can be seen from several of the articles in thisspecial collection. These theories have been drawn mostly from the social

sciences, particularly sociology, anthropology, social psychology and linguistics.

No particular theory or set of theories currently dominates research on online

communities. Rather we see the application of different theories that have been

selected based on the disciplinary training of the researchers applying them. As

new and novel practices emerge within the online community environments,

researchers broaden their perspectives as they seek to understand and explain

online community dynamics and their effects on people, organizations and

cultures.

The call inviting contributions for this special collection

identified design, theory and practice as key issues for authors to address. Over

sixty abstracts were received from authors working in 13 different countries.These researchers belong to a range of disciplines including: advertising,

business, communications, information studies, information systems,

psychology, sociology, and research and development groups in companies. The

range of topics covered speaks of the broad and growing number of researchers

who are now working on this topic.

The abstracts were reviewed and the authors of nineteen were invited to submit



full manuscripts. Each of these nineteen manuscripts was then reviewed by three

or more reviewers and rated using the JCMC reviewer guidelines. The final nine

articles that were accepted went through yet another round of revisions before

being accepted for publication. The articles that follow provide a rich slice of the

current research in online communities. They cover a range of topics,

methodologies, theories and practices. Indirectly they all speak to design since

they aim to extend our understanding of the field, though few attempt to directly

address practical design issues, which is an important topic for future research.

The variety shown in these nine articles illustrates how broad definition is of this

rapidly growing field known as 'online communities,' as can be seen from thebrief introduction to each that follows.

Articles in this Collection

Fayard and DeSanctis use a qualitative approach to study developmental stages

and the mechanisms that shaped and sustained an online forum (KMforum) for

information systems professionals in India in their article Evolution of an Online

Forum for Knowledge Management Professionals: A language Game Analysis.

Their analysis shows how a loose collection of professionals with a common

interest can develop a rhythm of conversation that allows the development of

sustainable and meaningful online interaction, and reveals evolutionary dynamics

in the life cycles of the forum suggestive of the developmental phases of offline

groups. The article ends with useful suggestions about ways of improving

community dynamics online.

Using longitudinal data, Kavanaugh, Carroll, Rosson, Zin, and Reese,

in Community Networks: Where Offline Communities Meet Online, provide a

deeper understanding of the use and social impact of a mature networked

community, the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV). Their work investigated

whether Internet-based technologies made a difference in the extent to which

individuals become involved and participate in local social life. The analysis and

discussion provided in this article of exogenous and mediating variables helps





communities originating in the English-speaking Internet. In Evaluation of a

Systematic Design for Virtual Patient Community , Leimeister and Krcmar

describe an evaluation of the design elements of a virtual community for German

cancer patients that was launched in 2001. In addition they examine design

features that support trust development among participants, which they identify

as an important contributor to the community's success. This study is an

example of how design and evaluation can be tightly coupled as a community

develops.

Turner, Smith, Fisher and Welser's work, Picturing Usenet: Mapping Computer-

Mediated Collective Action, describes the vast and complex Usenet landscape

through a variety of visual representations provided by Netscan, a tool designed

for mining and visually representing relationships. Using this tool, the authors

investigate how newsgroup hierarchies vary, how interaction within them varies

and how participants' contributions vary by exploring large data sets of millions

of entities. Netscan enables latent but invisible patterns in conversational data

sets to become visible and provides a strong quantitative foundation for

interpretive studies of patterns of communication on Usenet.

The article by Piller, Schubert, Koch, and M�slein, Overcoming Mass Confusion:

Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities, seeks to transfer and

apply current research on online communities to the manufacturing and mass

customization arena. Their article describes an in-depth analysis of six casestudies dealing with collaborative customer co-design projects in which mass

confusion is an inherent problem. The study identifies sources of mass confusion

and online community applications to help overcome these challenges. Three

general solution paths are suggested: offering customers support to achieve their

initial designs so that they can avoid having to struggle with starting from

scratch; fostering joint creativity and problem-solving; and reducing the

perception of risk by supporting trust.





observed. Research in online communities draws on methods, theories and

practices from many disciplines, making this an exciting and challenging field.

Acknowledgments

We thank Heather Halpin from the College of Information Studies at the

University of Maryland, who tracked the reviewing of the articles from

submission of initial abstracts through to the final versions. We also thank

Weimin Hou from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the reviewers

who provided the thoughtful comments that enabled us to select the best articles

and supported the authors in improving their work.

References

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De Souza, C., S., & Preece, J. (2004). A framework for analyzing and

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About the Authors

Jenny Preece is Dean of the College of Information Studies at the University of

Maryland. She is author of several books including Online Communities:

Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability (John Wiley & Sons, 2000)

and Interaction Design: Beyond HCI , co-authored with Yvonne Rogers and Helen

Sharp (John Wiley & Sons, 2002).

Address: College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, 4015E

Hornbake Building, S. Wing, College Park, MD 20742 USA

Diane Maloney-Krichmar is Special Assistant to the President at Bowie State

University, where she works on university initiatives related to education and

technology. She has a Ph.D. in Language, Literature, and Culture from the

University of Maryland Baltimore County. One of her current projects addresses

health and technology disparities among low-income African American women by

using a community participatory design approach to evaluate and design

culturally relevant online health informatics.

Address: Bowie State University, Office of the President, 14000 Jericho Park

Rd., Bowie, MD 20715 USA

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Online Communities- Design, Theory, And Practice - Jenny Preece & Diane Maloney- Krichmar