Virtual communities - a virtual session on virtual conferences

Virtual communities supported by computers and communication facilities have existed for about two decades. Virtual meetings around the world became technically feasible once there was a sufficient number of satellites to relay data communication, and became commonplace at companies that could afford computer-mediated communication (CMC). Today, technological advances, coupled with social changes, mean that virtual communities can be useful to many people. The goal of this session is to demonstrate how virtual communities can be established and kept going using inexpensive technical means. The meeting will be held during a scientific conference on worldwide distributed work, by presenters who have organized and run at least one virtual event. It will itself be a virtual event, with contributions from Philadelphia in the west to Hong Kong in the east and South Africa in the south. The physical auditorium will be present in Berchtesgaden, a small town in the south of Germany; virtual participants may be anywhere.     

Understanding and analysing activity and learning in virtual communities

Abstract  The purpose of this study is to provide a preliminary framework to observe, analyse and evaluate both activity and learning in virtual communities. So various types of virtual communities will be studied by examining their relationship to socialisation and learning. After a presentation of the main ideas of Wenger's social learning theory, the principal components of the social context of the emergence and evolution of virtual communities will be described. It will show how taking this context into account enables the definition of four principal types of virtual communities: community of interest, goal-oriented community of interest, learners' community and community of practice and describe how the activity of these communities develops according to the goals they set for themselves and to the strategies they adopt to reach them. For each type of virtual community, an attempt will be made to determine the process of negotiation of meaning at the base of learning, and to describe the learning performed in terms of participation and reification processes.     

Creating a model of the dynamics of socio-technical groups

Individuals participating in technologically mediated forms of organization often have difficulty recognizing when groups emerge, and how the groups they take part in evolve. This paper contributes an analytical framework that improves awareness of these virtual group dynamics through analysis of electronic trace data from tasks and interactions carried out by individuals in systems not explicitly designed for context adaptivity, user modeling or user personalization. We discuss two distinct cases to which we have applied our analytical framework. These two cases provide a useful contrast of two prevalent ways for analyzing social relations starting from electronic trace data: either artifact-mediated or direct person-to-person interactions. Our case study integrates electronic trace data analysis with analysis of other, triangulating data specific to each application. We show how our techniques fit in a general model of group informatics, which can serve to construct group context, and be leveraged by future tool development aimed at augmenting context adaptivity with group context and a social dimension. We describe our methods, data management strategies and technical architecture to support the analysis of individual user task context, increased awareness of group membership, and an integrated view of social, information and coordination contexts.     

Virtual communities - a virtual session on virtual conferences

Virtual communities supported by computers and communication facilities have existed for about two decades. Virtual meetings around the world became technically feasible once there was a sufficient number of satellites to relay data communication, and became commonplace at companies that could afford computer-mediated communication (CMC). Today, technological advances, coupled with social changes, mean that virtual communities can be useful to many people. The goal of this session is to demonstrate how virtual communities can be established and kept going using inexpensive technical means. The meeting will be held during a scientific conference on worldwide distributed work, by presenters who have organized and run at least one virtual event. It will itself be a virtual event, with contributions from Philadelphia in the west to Hong Kong in the east and South Africa in the south. The physical auditorium will be present in Berchtesgaden, a small town in the south of Germany; virtual participants may be anywhere.     

Affect in Computer-Meditated Communication: An Experiment in Synchronous Terminal-to-Terminal Discussion

With the spread of computer networks, communication via computer conferences, electronic mail, and computer bulletin boards will become more common in society, but little is known about the social psychological implications of these technologies. One possibility is a change in physiological arousal, feelings, and expressive behavior-that is, affect. These computer-mediated communication technologies focus attention on the message, transmit social information poorly, and do not have a well-developed social etiquette. Therefore, these technologies might be associated with less attention to others, less social feedback, and depersonalization of the communication setting. In the present study we examined what would happen to feelings and interpersonal behavior in an experiment in which two people met for the first time and discussed a series of questions in order to get to know one another. We measured physiological arousal (pulse and palmar sweat), subjective affect (emotional state and evaluations), and expressive behavior (self-disclosure and uninhibited behavior) in both synchronous computer-mediated and face-to-face discussions. (For comparison purposes, we also examined these effects under high- and low-evaluation anxiety). Communicating by computer did not influence physiological arousal, and it did not change emotions or self-evaluations. However, people who communicated by computer evaluated each other less favorably than did people who communicated face-to-face, they felt and acted as though the setting was more impersonal, and their behavior was more uninhibited. These findings suggest that computer-mediated communication, rather than provoking emotionality per se, elicits asocial or unregulated behavior. Of course, our data are based on a laboratory experiment using just one type of computer-mediated communication, but the results are generally consistent with anecdotal evidence and new field research on how people use computers to communicate in organizations.     

The medium matters: Mining the long-promised merit of group interaction in creative idea generation tasks in a meta-analysis of the electronic group brainstorming literature

This meta-analysis examines the influence of electronic communication media on group idea generation tasks. Data from the following three areas of the brainstorming literature are synthesized to assess differences across performance variables and group member satisfaction: (1) electronic brainstorming (EBS) groups versus traditional face-to-face (FTF) interacting groups, (2) EBS groups versus nominal groups, and (3) EBS versus electronic nominal (e-nominal) groups. The results of this integration show that EBS groups are more productive and more satisfied with the interaction process than FTF groups. Additionally, large EBS groups outperformed nominal groups, whereas small nominal groups outperformed EBS groups. These findings have important implications for electronic collaboration and teamwork in both academic and organizational settings, especially given the recent proliferation of virtual teamwork.     

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AND THEIR NETWORK SUPPORT: A CYBERNETIC ANALYSIS

The Internet supports many virtual communities, and it is arguable that its support for communities is its greatest success. All virtual communities depend on their network for communication and any shortcomings in the network, especially shortcomings relative to the natural communication that takes place in real-world communities, will affect the community supported by the network. An analysis of the relationship between the supporting network and the supported community is presented. The analysis is cybernetic in that it is expressed in terms of cybernetic concepts, including self-organization, requisite variety, and social systems as collections of thinking participants. The results of the analysis show how network behavior affects the community and its culture in general, as well as in some specific ways.     

THE GRID-E-CARD: ARCHITECTURE TO SHARE COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE ON THE GRID

Using the Grid for electronic learning can be considered a major innovation that increases the potential of the Internet for collaborative learning and transforms it into a gigantic high speed network of knowledge and services. Furthermore, with the refinement of peer-to-peer communication, the emerging network models will allow thousands of learners to access these solutions, regardless of their different computer systems. These solutions can be compared to storage devices that share learning resources according to the user' s needs. With the substantial increase of information nodes and the multiplicity of computers making use of this complex network, cognitive overload or transactional distance inherent to the technology can quickly become an obstacle to the learning process. Therefore, the Grid requires the development of appropriate learning tools and services. This paper presents an approach to reduce cognitive overload and transactional distance for a virtual learning community (VLC) on the Grid. This paper proposes a computer-Grid communication device called “Grid-e-Card.” Its goal is to bring users together according to their signature to share collective intelligence in a social context: the knowledge they have acquired, the objectives they wish to meet, or the learning services that correspond to their needs. This methodology is based on a set of P2P-agents who handle users' electronic portfolios (e-Portfolios) as knowledge prosthesis and exploit e-Learning qualification (e-Qualification) processes as aggregation methods to dynamically organize people in relevant virtual learning communities.     

Stuck in the mud [virtual communities]

As netizens maneuver through an ever expanding web of information, they continually negotiate the duality of their online and physical lives. Increasingly immersive online environments have encouraged the rise of artificial societies. Anonymity, equality, and the ability to interact with everyone from everywhere allow netizens to explore their alter egos through cyberegos. Sociologists and psychologists will debate the merits and dangers of interactions within these virtual communities for a long time. But we don't care, we're just looking for the coolest cyberspots. The article investigates virtual communities and their underlying technologies     

Local Groups Online: Political Learning and Participation

Voluntary associations serve crucial roles in local communities and within our larger democratic society. They aggregate shared interests, collective will, and cultivate civic competencies that nurture democratic participation. People active in multiple local groups frequently act as opinion leaders and create “weak” social ties across groups. In Blacksburg and surrounding Montgomery County, Virginia, the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) community computer network has helped to foster nearly universal Internet penetration. Set in this dense Internet context, the present study investigated if and how personal affiliation with local groups enhanced political participation in this high information and communication technology environment. This paper presents findings from longitudinal survey data that indicate as individuals’ uses of information technology within local formal groups increases over time, so do their levels and types of involvement in the group. Furthermore, these increases most often appear among people who serve as opinion leaders and maintain weak social ties in their communities. Individuals’ changes in community participation, interests and activities, and Internet use suggest ways in which group members act upon political motivations and interests across various group types.      

Swimming with mermaids: Communication and social density in the Second Life merfolk community

While individuals are solicited by a growing number of online networks and virtual communities, human cognitive resources are still limited in terms of the number of fruitful interactions a given individual can sustain. With a high degree of competition for attention, affiliation with the community and communication between its members are central for the survival of virtual communities. A particular virtual community could shed a new light on these phenomena. Indeed, beside the conventional communities based on human-like land-dwelling avatars, a merfolk community spontaneously emerged in the seas of the virtual world of Second Life. The fact that merfolk avatars characteristics strongly restrain their interactions with others and their ability to simultaneously join other communities obviously impacts the structuring and communication within the merfolk community. In order not to become isolated, the members have to develop optimal strategies to keep strong bonds, which in turn reinforce the immersion process. The Second Life merfolk community therefore provides an ideal model to study how members of a virtual community can compensate for ultra-specialization by increasing the quality of the internal communication processes within the community. Furthermore, the observation of the merfolk virtual community demonstrates how optimizing communication, even in a community with a wide repartition and low actual density within the virtual world, can reinforce social density.     

E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions

E-commerce is a fundamental method of doing business, such that for a firm to say it is trading at all in the modern market-place it must have some element of on-line presence. Coupled with this is the explosion of the “population” of Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games and other shared virtual environments. Many suggest this will lead to a further dimension of commerce: virtual commerce. We discuss here the issues, current roadblocks and present state of an e-commerce transaction carried out completely within a virtual environment; a virtual transaction. Although technically such transactions are in a sense trivial, they raise many other issues in complex ways thus making V-transactions a highly interesting cross-disciplinary issue. We also discuss the social, ethical and regulatory implications for the virtual communities in these environments of such v-transactions, how their implementation affects the nature and management of a virtual environment, and how they represent a fundamental merging of the real and virtual worlds for the purpose of commerce. We highlight the minimal set of features a v-transaction capable virtual environment requires and suggest a model of how in the medium term they could be carried out via a methodology we call click-through, and that the developers of such environments will need to take on the multi-modal behavior of their users, as well as elements of the economic and political sciences in order to fully realize the commercial potential of the v-transaction.     

Carving a niche: ICT,social capital,and trust in the shift from personal to impersonal trading in Tanzania

Although the research community is now starting to provide a more detailed understanding of the magnitude and details of small businesses' greater access to information and communication technology (ICT), there is still a poor understanding of social capital and trust, two important (but not necessarily related) concepts that are largely missing from information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) scholarship. This article aims to fill the knowledge gap by profiling three Tanzanian businesswomen who have managed to enter the high-profit area of bulk exporting African blackwood (“ebony”) carvings. Their experience shows the successful use of a spread of ICT applications, and e-mail in particular, as crucial tools to build on existing networks and to maintain trust with wealthy foreign buyers. With the help of ICT to deal with these relationships, the women stay in touch by “keeping up appearances” at a social level, albeit at a distance. In doing so, they are managing to do what institutions are yet to achieve: the move from personal to impersonal exchange. Their experience has implications for how other entrepreneurs can use ICT to leverage resources, ideas, and information from contacts outside their own social milieu. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Learning Virtual Community Loyalty Behavior From a Perspective of Social Cognitive Theory

Drawing upon social cognitive theory (SCT), this research postulates several personal and environmental factors as key drivers of virtual community loyalty behavior in online settings. An empirical testing of this model, by investigating undergraduate students' participation in communities of online games, reveals the applicability of SCT in virtual communities. The study's test results show that the influences of both affective commitment and social norms on community loyalty behavior are significant, whereas the influences of both exchange ideology and social support on community loyalty behavior are insignificant. This research contributes to the online community literature by assessing critical antecedent factors to the unexplored area of community loyalty behavior, by validating idiosyncratic drivers of community loyalty behavior and by performing an operationalization of affective commitment and social norms in a virtual world. Last, managerial implications and limitations of this research are provided.     

Developing an antecedent model of knowledge sharing intention in virtual communities

This study explored the antecedent model of knowledge sharing intention in virtual communities based on social influence theory. A field survey was performed with the participation of 176 college students who were Facebook users. The results indicated that expected benefits (i.e., cognitive benefits, social integrative benefits, personal integrative benefits, and hedonic benefits) significantly and positively influenced social influence factors (i.e., group norms, social identity, and subjective norms). In addition, social influence factors (i.e., group norms, social identity, and subjective norms) significantly and positively influenced knowledge sharing intention in virtual communities. Finally, social influence factors (i.e., group norms, social identity, and subjective norms) fully mediate the effects of expected benefits (i.e., cognitive benefits, social integrative benefits, personal integrative benefits, and hedonic benefits) on knowledge sharing intention. This study identified the antecedents of knowledge sharing intention in virtual communities, and the results could be applied to areas of organization, education, and business.     

Authentic virtual others? The promise of post-modern technologies

While modern technological development has promised the liberation of humanity from the constraints of the natural world: disease, toil, hunger and so on, post-modern technological developments promise a new kind of liberation: the freeing of humanity from the limitations and burdens found in the social world of people. Emerging technologies such as virtual humans and sociable robots exemplify this post-modern promise. This paper aims to explore the potential unintended consequence of such technologies and question the character of the “liberation” they promise. While virtual “other” technologies are being developed under the guise of solving social problems and providing therapeutics, the full effect of their deployment will be much more profound. Developers of virtual others do not aim to create fully intelligent social actors but merely to evoke a sense of social presence. It is notable, however, how easily social presence and attachment are evoked in human beings. The difficulty does not lie in the suspension of disbelief but rather in fighting the unconscious and pre-rational urge to anthropomorphize and imagine objects as social others. As imperfect but highly seductive simulations, virtual others are instances of post-modern hyperreality. Embracing them, I argue, carries the risk of an undesirable shift in the collective conception of authentic sociality. Rather than succumbing to technological somnambulism and naively believing that virtual others can be held at the rational distance necessary to prevent any unwanted reshaping of human social interaction, one should be cautious and critical of what the post-modern promise of technology holds in store for those who pursue it.     

实时性欺诈检测系统的设计与实现

在目前通话设备日益普及的过程中,电话资费的恶意拖欠现象已经引起了各大电信运营商的注意。文章首先简要介绍了以前采用的几种检测系统并引出它们各自的不足,然后提出了一种新的实时性的欺诈检测算法。该算法首先建立用户的个人行为模型和典型的欺诈行为模型,在通过用户的每个电话行为对个人行为模型进行实时性更新,形成新的用户个人行为模型;最后与典型的欺诈行为模型进行比较,以判断是否有产生欺诈行为的可能。在算法中,运用尽量简单的概率统计方法,大大地降低了计算的复杂度,使得它可以实时性处理新产生的大量话单;同时由于比较合理的设计,算法减少了由于长期迭代而产生的数值偏移。依照该算法所编写的程序,在实验室和实际的运行中,取得了较为满意的效果。     

Virtual worlds as knowledge management platform – a practice‐perspective

Virtual worlds, as electronic environments where individuals can interact in a realistic manner in form of avatars, are increasingly used by gamers, consumers and employees. Therefore, they provide opportunities for reinventing business processes. Especially, effective knowledge management (KM) requires the use of appropriate information and communication technology (ICT) as well as social interaction. Emerging virtual worlds enable new ways to support knowledge and knowing processes because these virtual environments consider social aspects that are necessary for knowledge creating and knowledge sharing processes. Thus, collaboration in virtual worlds resembles real‐life activities. In this paper, we shed light on the use of Second Life (SL) as a KM platform in a real‐life setting. To explore the potential and current usage of virtual worlds for knowledge and knowing activities, we conducted a qualitative study at IBM. We interviewed IBM employees belonging to a special workgroup called ‘Web 2.0/virtual worlds’ in order to gain experience in generating and exchanging knowledge by virtually collaborating and interacting. Our results show that virtual worlds – if they are able to overcome problems like platform stability, user interface or security issues – bear the potential to serve as a KM platform. They facilitate global and simultaneous interaction, create a common context for collaboration, combine different tools for communication and enhance knowledge and knowing processes.     

Development of human skills

Of all the benefits public access to computers (PAC) offer users, the most valued by users are having more information for stronger relationships, better learning, and effective transactions. This article analyzes the most salient benefit, more information for stronger relationships with friends and family. Results of a qualitative study among users of libraries, telecenters, and cybercafés in Colombia, South America, show that social media and personal relationships can also have an important community and sociopolitical dimension. By fostering a sense of belonging and connectedness to community and to a larger world, PAC usage often leads to feelings of empowerment and development of social capital, two intangible factors that are critical for community development. This study used a mixed-methods approach, combining surveys and interviews in five regions of the country, to uncover the benefits of PAC for underserved communities. Its findings contribute new insight about the impact of information and communication technologies on community development and social inclusion.     

唯有源头活水来——传统图案在网络符号设计中的再创造

人们透过视觉符号来表达自己民族的文化内涵,同时,也通过对传统文化的学习,了解在社会语境中网络信息符号所传达的含义。传统图案是整合了符号形式(signifier)与符号的意义(signified)两者之间的潜在力量。信息设计应该如何通过网络整合,有效地进行视觉传达是设计师们日益关注的焦点。懂得如何在网络符号中融合传统图案元素,注入新时的代需求,才能将中国传统图案赋予新的生命。本文的研究将从传统图案中包含的符号性来挖掘和思考。