Empowering processes in online support groups among people living with HIV/AIDS: A comparative analysis of ‘lurkers’ and ‘posters’

The proliferation of online support groups provides an opportunity for individuals living with HIV/AIDS to obtain support online. The present study aimed to explore how different levels of participation in online support groups are associated with empowering processes and outcomes for individuals living with HIV/AIDS. A total of 340 individuals living with HIV/AIDS were recruited. They completed an online questionnaire consisting of measures on satisfaction with online support groups, empowering processes, self-care self efficacy, loneliness, optimism, coping, depression, and health-related quality of life. Results revealed that compared to posters, members who only read the messages (lurkers) scored lower in receiving social support and receiving useful information in empowering processes, and lower in satisfaction with their relationship with group members. They also scored higher in distraction and lower in planning in the brief COPE. In addition, they scored lower in social function and higher in energy. There were no significant differences in self-care self efficacy, loneliness, depression, or optimism between posters and lurkers. Our results suggest that lurking in the online support groups may be as empowering as reading and posting messages to the groups. More research is needed to identify the long term effects of online support group use.     

Relationship between the level of intimacy and lurking in online social network services

The rapid growth of online social network services (SNSs) leads to new research questions. Unlike in other online communities, people in SNSs expect to gratify social-emotional needs rather than informational needs, and they are connected in a person-to-person manner which is more direct and interpersonal. The author argued that the factors influencing members’ public posting in SNSs differ from those in traditional online communities. Interpersonal intimacy was postulated to influence lurking behaviors in SNSs. To investigate the relationship between intimacy level and posting frequency in SNSs, an online survey was conducted in Wallop, a SNS provided by Microsoft. Responses (102) were collected, in which the first 40 posters and the first 40 lurkers were selected for statistical analysis. The result shows significant differences exist in both verbal and affective intimacy level between lurkers and posters. The level of verbal intimacy and the level of affective intimacy are positively correlated with posting frequency. The result of discriminant analysis shows that verbal intimacy and affective intimacy are useful for discriminating posting/lurking groups of users. In addition, significant gender differences in perceived intimacy and posting behaviors were found. The result implies that people lurk in SNSs because they believe that their social-emotional needs may not be satisfied even if they post.     

Increasing participation in online communities: A framework for human–computer interaction

Online communities are becoming an accepted part of the lives of Internet users, although participation in these communities is dependent on the types of people that form them. Some of the online community’s members do not participate, people referred to as lurkers, whereas others who have been in the community for a long time, referred to as elders, participate regularly and support others. Understanding what drives these individuals and how they chose whether or not to participate will lead to online communities that thrive. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to describe what drives such individuals to carry out actions such as posting messages and adding content (level 1), the cognitions they use to determine whether or not to take such actions (level 2) and the means by which they go about carrying out the action in the environment (level 3). Finally, the framework is applied to the problem of encouraging members to participate by discussing the methods by which people can be persuaded to participate by changing the way they interpret their desires and their environment.     

Understanding lurkers in online communities: A literature review

In internet culture, lurkers are a special group of website users who regularly login to online communities but seldom post. This study aims to provide an overall understanding of lurkers by explaining the definition of lurkers, discussing the reasons for lurking and providing suggestions on de-lurking. To understand the reason for lurking, this study first explains why people participate in online communities by building an integrated model of motivational factors of online behaviors. This model classifies motivational factors into four categories: the nature of the online community, individual characteristics, the degree of commitment and quality requirement. Based on this model, four types of lurking reasons are identified: environmental influence, personal preference, individual-group relationship and security consideration. Finally, several strategies for motivating participation in online communities are provided, including external stimuli, improved user-friendliness, encouragement of participation and guidance for newcomers.     

Trolling the trolls: Online forum users constructions of the nature and properties of trolling

‘Trolling’ refers to a specific type of malicious online behaviour, intended to disrupt interactions, aggravate interactional partners and lure them into fruitless argumentation. However, as with other categories, both ‘troll’ and ‘trolling’ may have multiple, inconsistent and incompatible meanings, depending upon the context in which the term is used and the aims of the person using the term.Drawing data from 14 online fora and newspaper comment threads, this paper explores how online users mobilise and make use of the term ‘troll’. Data was analysed from a discursive psychological perspective.Four repertoires describing trolls were identified in posters online messages: 1) that trolls are easily identifiable, 2) nostalgia, 3) vigilantism and 4) that trolls are nasty. Analysis also revealed that despite repertoire 01, identifying trolls is not a simple and straight-forward task.Similarly to any other rhetorical category, there are tensions inherent in posters accounts of nature and acceptability of trolling. Neither the category ‘troll’ nor the action of ‘trolling’ has a single, fixed meaning. Either action may be presented as desirable or undesirable, depending upon the aims of the poster at the time of posting.     

Non-public and public online community participation: Needs, attitudes and behavior

Nonpublic participation within an online community, often called lurking, occurs when an individual joins a community, but does not post. This study examines the nature of lurking, why people lurk and the differences in attitudes between lurkers and posters. The results indicate significant differences between people who lurk and those who post in an online community. We conclude that when people lurk they are observing, which in no way is a negative behavior. This introverted or passive behavior affects lurkers' attitudes about the benefits of the community, their expectations, and opinions of themselves and others who lurk. In general lurkers are less optimistic and less positive than those who post. Blair Nonnecke is a usability professional and academic with a particular interest in user-centred design and online communities. Blair is an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph where he studies participation in online communities and the usability of in-vehicle navigation devices. His recent research focuses on three areas: survey methods for hard to reach participants, the role participation plays in online learning environments, and factors leading to participation in communities of practice. Dorine Andrews D.C.D. As a specialist in communications design, Dr. Andrews' research and publications focus on both online communities and the implementation of major technology change in organizations. She has taught at Georgetown University's Communications, Culture and Technology program and at the University of Baltimore's School for Interaction Design and Information Architecture. She is now a principal change consultant for RWD Technologies, Inc. headquartered in Baltimore, MD. She can be reached via e-mail at dandrews@rwd.com Jennifer Preece is Professor and Dean of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, USA. Her research and teaching interests focus on human-computer interaction, online communities and social computing. She has authored many papers and books on these topics. Her two most recent books are: Online Communites: “Designing usability, supporting sociability”, and a coauthroed book with Helen Sharp and Yvonne Rogers entiled “Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction”. Both books are published by John Wiley & Sons.     

The fragmented educator 2.0: Social networking sites,acceptable identity fragments,and the identity constellation

Social networking sites (SNS) have been used to support educational and professional endeavors. However, little research has been done to understand the relationship between educator identity and participation in SNS or to examine the implications that institutional regulation of such media may have upon educator identity. Using grounded theory, in this study we developed a framework for understanding how a group of teacher education students viewed their developing identities within social networking sites as they began the life transition to becoming educators. The theory that emerged from this study proposes that educator identity consists of a constellation of interconnected acceptable identity fragments, which are each intentional, authentic, transitional, necessarily incomplete, and socially-constructed and -responsive. This view of educator identity contrasts sharply with previous views of identity by highlighting the complicated, negotiated, and recursive relationship that exists between educator participation in SNS and educator identity. Additionally, this perspective suggests that educator participation in SNS is neither fully representative of authentic identity (as prominent SNS models imply) nor dramaturgical. These findings yield important implications for educators, researchers, educational institutions, lawmakers, and SNS developers alike, because they lead to a more sophisticated understanding of identity and online participation that is essential for developing mechanisms to support moral and legal judgments, professionalism, and social interactions relative to SNS.     

Attitude contagion in consumer opinion platforms: posters and lurkers

The study details why and how product reviews from consumer opinion platforms affect individual users’ brand buying behavior. Drawing on social theories, the authors predict that consumers’ perceptions of other consumers’ product reviews affect brand buying intentions through two intervening variables: product- and brand-related attitudes. Moreover, the authors investigate whether these relationships are contingent on user type (i.e., active posters or passive lurkers). The empirical results support a multiple mediation framework in which product- and brand attitudes mediate the effects of consumer product reviews on individual brand buying intentions. In addition, consumer product reviews appear to more strongly affect the brand-related attitudes of posters than lurkers. Lurkers, who make up the majority of opinion platform users, are much less influenced by the opinions of others than posters. Encouraging variations in poster- and lurker rates may be an effective means for companies to manage and control consumer-to-consumer communication.     

Weaving the internet together: Imagined communities in newspaper comment threads

Online newspapers (and other spaces) are increasingly seeking to utilise user-generated content alongside professionally developed material. However, this might leave websites increasingly vulnerable to trolls, who work to disrupt online communications in online spaces. Such behaviour can have serious consequences both in peoples online and offline lives, and for the development of coherent online communities. One means of controlling is through the manipulation of the online space to create social norms of polite behaviour through the founding of ‘imagined communities’ online.Approaching the issue from a discursive psychological perspective, this paper draws upon comments published in two online British newspaper comment sections responding to the publication of an academic article on trolling. Imagined communities are shown to arise irrespective of the presence of the virtual infrastructure to support the development of these imagined communities.Key features of imagined communities identified here are: individuation (as opposed to deindividuation); mutual influence between posters; shared history for both the users and the online space; the use of humour to cement social bonds. Analysis also revealed tensions in posters understanding of online and offline behaviours.This research holds implications for understanding online spaces, and the interactions between users within these spaces.     

Predicting the helpfulness of online reviews using multilayer perceptron neural networks

With the great development of e-commerce, users can create and publish a wealth of product information through electronic communities. It is difficult, however, for manufacturers to discover the best reviews and to determine the true underlying quality of a product due to the sheer volume of reviews available for a single product. The goal of this paper is to develop models for predicting the helpfulness of reviews, providing a tool that finds the most helpful reviews of a given product. This study intends to propose HPNN (a helpfulness prediction model using a neural network), which uses a back-propagation multilayer perceptron neural network (BPN) model to predict the level of review helpfulness using the determinants of product data, the review characteristics, and the textual characteristics of reviews. The prediction accuracy of HPNN was better than that of a linear regression analysis in terms of the mean-squared error. HPNN can suggest better determinants which have a greater effect on the degree of helpfulness. The results of this study will identify helpful online reviews and will effectively assist in the design of review sites.     

Impact of Internet gambling on problem gambling among adolescents in Italy: Findings from a large-scale nationally representative survey

AimsThe primary aim of the present study was to understand the impact of online gambling on gambling problems in a large-scale nationally representative sample of Italian youth, and to identify and then further examine a subgroup of online gamblers who reported higher rates of gambling problems.DesignData from the ESPAD^®Italia2013 (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs) Study were used for analyses of adolescent Internet gambling.SettingSelf-administered questionnaires were completed by a representative sample of high school students, aged 15–19 years.ParticipantsA total of 14,778 adolescent students.MeasurementsRespondents’ problem gambling severity; gambling behavior (participation in eight different gambling activities, the number of gambling occasions and the number of online gambling occasions, monthly gambling expenditure); Socio-demographics (e.g., family structure and financial status); and control variables were measured individually (i.e., use of the Internet for leisure activities and playing video games).FindingsRates of problem gambling were five times higher among online gamblers than non-online gamblers. In addition, factors that increased the risk of becoming a problem online gambler included living with non-birth parents, having a higher perception of financial family status, being more involved with gambling, and the medium preferences of remote gamblers (e.g., Internet cafes, digital television, and video game console).ConclusionsThe online gambling environment may pose significantly greater risk to vulnerable players. Family characteristics and contextual elements concerning youth Internet gambling (e.g., remote mediums) may play a key role in explaining problem online gambling among adolescents.     

Psychological empowerment and user satisfaction: Investigating the influences of online brand community participation

The exponential growth of online brand communities has created a platform where empowered consumers can share knowledge and experiences and participate in community activities. Drawing from psychological empowerment theory, this study proposes a comprehensive framework integrating both social and functional views to investigate the determinants that enhance psychological empowerment and user satisfaction, which consequently influence online brand community participation. By shedding light on the explanatory path routes and highlighting the underexplored and distinctive role of psychological empowerment, this study provides theoretical contributions to illustrate how an enabling environment can be cultivated to drive consumer participation in brand value co-creation.     

Pedagogical lurking: Student engagement in non-posting discussion behavior

This paper presents the results of a study of student non-posting participation behavior in two online classes. Most often active message is assessed and thus implicitly valued in online class discussion, but the act of writing messages is not the only factor that contributes to student learning. However, it is the most visible and easiest to measure. Students may engage in processes of reading and reflection on the discussion board, not leaving their mark; it is these acts that may be referred to as pedagogical lurking. In this study, students were asked to self-report their non-visible course activities, the reasons behind these activities and their perceived usefulness related to learning. Findings show that about half of the students felt that they learned through the online discussion experience, and that they believe both posting and reading messages contributed to their ability to learn. These students were likely to enter the discussion before posting to obtain a model for participation, and to return at a later time to check for replies and reflect. Students who participated solely to meet course requirements and who focused on posting messages more than reading messages had less positive impressions of the discussion activity’s impact on learning.     

A new method for trust and reputation evaluation in the cloud environments using the recommendations of opinion leaders' entities and removing the effect of troll entities

Trust in the cloud environment is not written into an agreement and is something earned. In any trust evaluation mechanism, opinion leaders are the entities influencing the behaviors or attitudes of others, this makes them to be trustworthy, valid among other characteristics. On the other hand, trolls are the entities posting incorrect and unreal comments; therefore, their effect must be removed. This paper evaluates the trust by considering the influence of opinion leaders on other entities and removing the troll entities’ effect in the cloud environment. Trust value is evaluated using five parameters; availability, reliability, data integrity, identity and capability. Also, we propose a method for opinion leaders and troll entity identification using three topological metrics, including input-degree, output-degree and reputation measures. The method being evaluated in various situation where shows the results of accuracy by removing the effect of troll entities and the advice of opinion leaders.     

Leveraging a personalized system to improve self-directed learning in online educational environments

Many students who participate in online courses experience frustration and failure because they are not prepared for the demanding and isolated learning experience. A traditional learning theory known as self-directed learning (SDL) is a foundation that can help establish features of a personalized system that helps students improve their abilities to manage their overall learning activities and monitor their own performance. Additionally, the system enables collaboration, interaction, feedback, and the much-needed support from the instructor and students' peers. A Web 2.0 social-technology application, MediaWiki, was adopted as the platform from which incremental features were developed to utilize the fundamental concepts of SDL. Students were able to customize content by setting specific learning goals, reflecting on their learning experiences, self-monitoring activities and performances, and collaborating with others in the class. SDL skills exist to some degree in all learners, this study finds that students' SDL abilities can improve when a course adopts a personalized and collaborative learning system that enables the students to be more proactive in planning, organizing, and monitoring their course activities.     

Unfriend or ignore tweets?: A time series analysis on Japanese Twitter users suffering from information overload

In recent years, with increased opportunities to post content on social media, a number of users are experiencing information overload in relation to social media use. This study addresses how Japanese Twitter users suffering from information overload cope with their stress, focusing on two actions: (1) The “unfriending” activities and (2) The changes in tweet processing methods. Objective data, such as numbers of friends, were collected through Twitter's open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and subjective data, such as perceived information overload and tweet processing methods, were collected through a web-based survey as a panel dataset (n = 778). The results demonstrated that although users experience information overload, they continue to increase their number of friends, and that the users who experience information overload modify their usage habits to avoid seeing all received tweets. In short, users do not choose a strategy to reduce the absolute number of received tweets, but only a strategy that involves changing the processing method of the received tweets.     

Discursive Equality and Everyday Talk Online: The Impact of “Superparticipants”

Empirical studies of online debate almost universally observe a “dominant” minority of posters. Informed by theories of deliberative democracy, these are typically framed negatively—yet research into their impact on debate is scant. To address this, a typology of what we call super‐participation (super‐posters, agenda‐setters and facilitators) is developed and applied to the http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ forum. Focusing on the first of these, we found 2,052 superposters (0.4%) contributing 47% of 25m+ posts. While superposters were quantitatively dominant, qualitative content analysis of the discursive practices of 25 superposters (n=40,044) found that most did not attempt to stop other users from posting (curbing) or attack them (flaming). In fact, in contradiction to the received wisdom, super‐posters discursively performed a range of positive roles.     

Motivations in virtual health communities and their relationship to community,connectedness and stress

This study explores the relationships between motivations for joining virtual health communities, online behaviors, and psycho-social outcomes. A sample of 144 women from two virtual health communities focusing on infertility completed survey measures assessing motivations, posting and receiving support, connectedness, community, and stress. Our results indicate that socio-emotional support motivations for joining the community were associated with posting support within the virtual community, while informational motivations were related to receiving support. Further, receiving support was associated with greater sense of virtual community as well as more general feelings of connectedness, which was related to less stress. Implications for virtual health community research are discussed.     

An investigation of teachers’ beliefs and their use of technology-based assessments

The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ beliefs about technology-based assessments (TBAs) and investigate the possible interplay between their beliefs and their usage of TBAs in classrooms. Forty technology-experienced science teachers participated in the study. Their beliefs about and use of TBAs were examined using semi-structured interviews, which were analyzed based on a coding scheme adapted from the decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB) model (Taylor & Todd, 1995). The analysis showed that ten components were substantial in the behavioral, control, and normative beliefs. While 85% teachers (34 out of 40) perceived TBAs as useful tools and identified a variety of usefulness, nearly 40% of the participants indicated the difficulties in using TBAs and their beliefs of ease of use were mainly negative. Also, teachers’ control beliefs about TBA focused on the social and external components such as time, supporting personnel, and infrastructure rather than the personal factors. In their normative beliefs, teachers tended to view school policies and parents’ opinions as constraints, whereas they also realized the benefits of using TBAs for learning. Furthermore, three groups of teachers were identified and characterized based on their usage of TBAs. Although some frequent users did not teach in resource-rich schools and faced constraints similar to those encountered by the occasional users, they seemed to actively look for more supports and solutions to overcome the lack of resources and the disapproval from the school administration. The findings extend the DTPB model of technology users by adding important beliefs about teaching and learning.