This paper addresses theoretically the question how virtual communication may affect cooperation in work teams. The degree of team virtualization, i.e. the extent to which interaction between team members occurs online, is related to parameters of the exchange. First, it is assumed that in online interaction task uncertainties are higher than in face-to-face contacts. Second, the gratifying value of peer rewards is assumed to be lower in online contacts. Thirdly, it is assumed that teams are different in the extent (...) to which members depend on their peers for positive affections, operationalized by the extent to which team members are interested in social relationships for their own sake, independently from their work interactions. Simulation results suggest both positive and negative effects of team virtualization on work-cooperation. (shrink)

Beginning with the well-knowncyber-rape in LambdaMOO, I argue that it ispossible to have real moral wrongs in virtualcommunities. I then generalize the account toshow how it applies to interactions in gamingand discussion communities. My account issupported by a view of moral realism thatacknowledges entities like intentions andcausal properties of actions. Austin's speechact theory is used to show that real people canact in virtual communities in ways that bothestablish practices and moral expectations, andwarrant strong identifications betweenthemselves and their (...) online identities. Rawls'conception of a social practice is used toanalyze the nature of the wrong and thestage-setting aspect of engaging in a practice. (shrink)

The Internet, as it exists today, is an outgrowth of the late 1960’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. During the 1980’s, the National Science Foundation established a high-speed, high-capacity network called NSFnet connecting many universities and government agencies. Finally, with the creation of the World Wide Web and the development and diffusion of inexpensive, reliable and easy to use public Internet access, electronic information technologies connect an increasingly large portion of the population. As a result, the communities with which (...) we are all familiar, communities based on geographic proximity, have changed. These sorts of changes raise many interesting but difficult questions. This paper focuses on two of those questions. First, what does the increasing use of and reliance on electronically mediated communications portend for our understanding of human communities, and second, what sorts of socio-political concepts and relationships best characterize the new “virtual community”? (shrink)

The Internet, as it exists today, is an outgrowth of the late 1960’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. During the 1980’s, the National Science Foundation established a high-speed, high-capacity network called NSFnet connecting many universities and government agencies. Finally, with the creation of the World Wide Web and the development and diffusion of inexpensive, reliable and easy to use public Internet access, electronic information technologies connect an increasingly large portion of the population. As a result, the communities with which (...) we are all familiar, communities based on geographic proximity, have changed. These sorts of changes raise many interesting but difficult questions. This paper focuses on two of those questions. First, what does the increasing use of and reliance on electronically mediated communications portend for our understanding of human communities, and second, what sorts of socio-political concepts and relationships best characterize the new “virtual community”? (shrink)

The impressive development of electronic communication techniques has given rise to virtual communities. The nature of these computer-mediated communities has been the subject of much recent debate. Are they ordinary social groups in electronic form, or are they fundamentally different from traditional communities? Understanding virtual communities seems a prerequisite for the design of better communication systems. To clarify this debate, we will resort to the classical sociological distinction between small traditional communities (based on (...) personal relations) and modern social groups (bound by looser, more impersonal links). We will argue that the discussion about virtual communities is often vitiated by a simplistic assimilation to traditional communities, whereas they may be in fact quite different and much more impersonal. Virtual communities are often bound by reference to common objects or goals, and not by personal relations. In this respect, virtual communities are just another example of a long-term evolution of modern society toward more abstract social relationships. (shrink)

The importance of online social spaces is growing. New Web 2.0 resources allow the creation of social networks by any netizen with minimal technical skills. These communities can be extremely narrowly focussed. In this paper, I identify two potential costs of membership in narrowly focussed virtual communities. First, that narrowly focussed communities can polarise attitudes and prejudices leading to increased social cleavage and division. Second, that they can lead sick individuals to revel in their illness, deliberately (...) indulging in their disease and denying the edicts of the medical profession. I specifically examine illness communities centred on the now defunct Multiple Personality Disorder. I highlight these potential problems and point to some technologies that may help combat them. (shrink)

The emergence of the Internet and various forms of virtual communities has led to the impact of a new social space on individuals who frequently replace the real world with alternative forms of socializing. In virtual communities, new ‘friendships’ are easily accepted;however,how this acceptance influences cultural identity has not been investigated. Based on the data collected from 443 respondents in the Republic of Serbia, authors analyzethisconnexion,as well as how the absorption of others’ cultural values is reflected (...) on the local cultural values. The results show that the adoption of others’ cultural values diminished the bond with the local community. The present paper adds to the theory of virtual communities by examining the relationship between the acceptance of an unknown person in a virtual community and its effects on cultural identity. This study contributes to the clarificationof the impact that virtual networking has on cultural identity. (shrink)

Radoslav Baltezarevic, Borivoje Baltezarevic, Piotr Kwiatek and Vesna Baltezarevic ABSTRACT: The emergence of the Internet and various forms of virtual communities has led to the impact of a new social space on individuals who frequently replace the real world with alternative forms of socializing. In virtual communities, new ‘friendships’ are easily accepted; however, how this...

Customers’ declining receptivity to conventional marketing tools has been a challenge for convenience stores. To overcome this, retailers are turning to social media as a new, potent marketing tool for creating business prospects and encouraging direct customer interaction. However, it is still unknown how social media marketing affects the shifts in customer behavior. This paper expands on the relationship of “loyalty program + virtual community experience → perceived value → customer loyalty” in the traditional convenience store scenario, refining the (...) variables of virtual community experience, perceived value, and customer loyalty. It also compares the effectiveness of different LP design structures and explores the mediation impact of program loyalty and the moderation effect of alternative attractiveness. The results demonstrate the superior performance of LPs with an expiry policy and differential returns and highlight the importance of enhancing members’ virtual community experiences in fostering customer perceived value and loyalty. The results also show the minor negative moderation impact of community group buying and prove that emotional value significantly impacts customer loyalty. Still, the social value does not affect program loyalty. The recommendations are offered, such as designing growing-oriented and periodical zeroing LPs, as well as using new social media marketing tools to empower traditional marketing techniques and constructing a “convenience store + community group buying” model. The findings have substantial theoretical and practical implications for traditional convenience stores in properly implementing loyalty and social media marketing tactics to maximize customer value and loyalty with a limited budget. (shrink)

This article assesses the relevance of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy for the study of online forms of communication. In particular, the article deals with the appropriateness of using the concept of language game for the purpose of describing what happens in a virtual community. Testing Wittgenstein’s concept of language game in online context, we also analyse the language practices of one specific virtual community (patterns of communication, style, roles of members, internal organization of this ‘form of life’).

It will be argued that the virtual agent (VA) can be characterized using phenomenological descriptive tools and other conceptual means within related paradigms of the analysis of subjectivity. From such a point of view, the main features of VA are: •VA is constituted by its communicative valencies; •VA is intentionally active in perception, and it is the case also at the intersubjective level; •VA establishes and supports the truth of its statements, which come out as a creative boundary, an (...) "unquestionable point of contact" between virtual "I" and virtual reality; •communicative intersubjectivity in cyberspace is better describedthrough recursive ontologies. Peirce's conception of the Subject as a species of semiosis can be helpful to clarify these points. Unlike the traditional concept of subject where communication stands at a level resting on an underlying level of being, for Peirce communication is inherent in mind itself. Along these lines, I argue for the open multivalence of the signified as overdetermined by communicative acts. (shrink)

Internet technology has given birth to continuous changes in business model and format innovation. With increasingly critical consumers, blowout development model and format innovation, enterprises are increasingly aware of the importance of customer participation in service innovation. At the same time, the development of information technology provides convenient conditions for communication between enterprises and customers, and online virtual community also provides a platform for customers to participate in the process of enterprise service innovation in an instant. Based on the (...) theory of customer participation, knowledge transfer and service innovation performance, this paper explores the influence mechanism of customer participation in virtual community on service innovation performance, and analyzes the mediating role of knowledge transfer. Through the analysis of the results of the questionnaire, the relevant hypotheses are verified. The results show that customer participation in virtual community has a positive impact on service innovation performance. Customer participation helps enterprises obtain relevant knowledge such as customer needs and reduce barriers to knowledge sharing. In addition, enterprises will acquire customer knowledge about new products, which provides the possibility for the development of new products and services, thereby enhancing the enterprises’ service innovation performance. Knowledge transfer plays a part of mediating role between customer participation and service innovation performance. In the process of enterprises’ service innovation, customers mainly participate in the enterprise by means of knowledge transfer and help the enterprise improve service innovation performance. (shrink)

The questions of this article are: what can we learn from deliberative democratic theory, its critics, the practices of local deliberative communities, the needs of potential participants, and the experiences of virtual communities that would be useful in designing a technology-facilitated institution for global civil society that is deliberative and democratic in its values? And what is the appropriate design of such an online institution so that it will be attentive to the undemocratic forces enabled by power (...) inequalities that can emerge in discursive communities? I answer these questions with an institutional innovation that meets a need of global civil society and that is responsive to critics of deliberative democratic theory and attentive to the particular agents engaged in women's human rights activism. (shrink)

With the growth of online commerce, companies have created virtual communities where users can create posts and reply to posts about the company’s products. VCs can be represented as networks, with users as nodes and relationships between users as edges. Information propagates through edges. In VC studies, it is important to know how the number of topics concerning the product grows over time and what network features make a user more influential than others in the information-spreading process. The (...) existing literature has not provided a quantitative method with which to determine key points during the topic emergence process. Also, few researchers have considered the link between multilayer physical features and the nodes’ spreading influence. In this paper, we present two new ideas to enrich network theory as applied to VCs: a novel application of an adjusted coefficient of determination to topic growth and an adjustment to the Jaccard coefficient to measure the connection between two users. A two-layer network model was first used to study the spread of topics through a VC. A random forest method was then applied to rank various factors that might determine an individual user’s importance in topic spreading through a VC. Our research provides insightful ways for enterprises to mine information from VCs. (shrink)

The virtual community under consideration is called theNigerian Village Square, ‘…a marketplace of ideas’. As an online discussion forum, NVS combines the features of listservs and newsgroups with a more elegant and user-friendly interface. While computer-mediated communication technologies augment political discourse in established democracies, new media and mobile technologies create avenues for a virtual sphere among Nigerians. Therefore, the ideal virtual sphere guarantees equal access to all connected netizens, equal right for all languages in netizens’ linguistic repertoire, (...) and it fosters democratic deliberation through policy debates, public dialogues and ‘online polylogues’. By linguistic marketing is meant discourse as a vehicle for ‘promotional acts’ and for ‘selling’ particular cultures and ideologies to multicultural and multilingual readers/audiences. One interpretation of this is in terms of asserting language rights and linguistic equality. The use of Nigerian languages with Nigerian Pidgin online is promotional and forexistential negotiation. This results in language mixture which is an instantiation of freedom of speech, freedom of switch and freedom to switch. The underlying pragmatic motivation for top-down language mixture and alternation in Nigerian virtual discourse is attention-getting with the aim of inducing an interdiscursive writer-reader cognitive as well as communicative interaction. Other pragmatic functions of code switching discussed in the paper include allusive textuality, amusing phaticity, anticipated interactivity, affective expressivity and audience affiliation or alienation, among others. Thus, intertextuality is an explanatory technique for investigating previously unexplored phenomena in digital code switching. (shrink)

IntroductionWith the normalization of COVID-19 prevention and control, a large number of intergenerational audiences with different cognition preferences and value orientations have started to pour into non-acquaintance virtual communities to address their social needs by disclosing their own thoughts, feelings and experiences toward certain topics. To avoid the negative impacts of self-disclosure, this study introduced the concept of social integration into cyber society among non-acquaintance VCs, such as the topic-based VCs. Our theoretical model considers both the psychological antecedents (...) and consequences of VC audiences’ social integration and our findings have implications for public online social life. Moreover, this research could play a guiding role in improving VC audiences’ social integration status in future online learning and telecommuting scenarios.MethodTo assess the theoretical model constructed in this manuscript, we conducted an online survey in two different topic-based VCs among Microblog and yielded 472 useable responses from intergenerational audiences, among which 28.81% were born before 1985, 26.67% were born from 1985 to 1995, and 48.52% were born after 1995. Our sample consisted of 208 individuals from Health Regimen VC and 264 individuals from Star Chasing VC, 200 were men and 272 were women.ResultsOur structural equation model indicated that individuals’ self-disclosure in topic-based VCs might not directly guide them to acquire social integration. However, intimacy and cognitive communion derived from VC audiences’ self-disclosure might not only enhance their social integration, but also improve their psychological well-being. In addition, VC audiences’ social integration mediated the relationship between intimacy and psychological well-being, and the relationship between cognitive communion and psychological well-being. Moreover, VC audiences’ intimacy was found to have a direct influence on their cognitive communion.ConclusionIn the context of topic-based VCs, audiences’ self-disclosure could significantly foster their intimacy and cognitive communion with others, and both intimacy and cognitive communion are conductive to VC audiences’ social integration. Thus, audiences in topic-based VCs who wish to improve their psychological well-being need to disclose themselves and build corresponding psychological foundations to enhance their social integration. Meanwhile, topic-based VCs should pay attention to the cultivation of intimacy and cognitive communion among audiences while encouraging them to reveal themselves. (shrink)

Howard P. Segal is well known to the utopian scholarly community, particularly with his excellent work on technology and utopianism in publications such as Technological Utopianism in American Culture, Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America, Technology in America: A Brief History, and Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford’s Village Industries. His most recent book, Utopias: A Brief History from Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities, is part of the Wiley-Blackwell Brief Histories of Religion Series and serves (...) as an introduction to key cultural and religious terms/movements. Segal does not shy away from bold definitions and.. (shrink)

While the vital impacts of linguistic and discursive politeness on the sustenance of talk and the possibility of community-building have enjoyed a lot of attention in linguistic scholarship, attention is shifting to virtual communities with studies interrogating their language use and interactional patterns. This study seeks to further that line of inquiry by investigating politeness in Nigerian news-based virtual communities. Taking an etic interpretive analytical approach which relies on the facework and relational-work paradigms, it studies (...) class='Hi'>virtual communities generated by four Nigerian online newspapers purposively sampled to represent the Nigerian geo-political zones and political ideologies between 2015 and 2018. Given the relative newness of the virtual community in Africa as well as its significant impacts on socio-political activities and attitudes to democracy and governance, the research will contribute significantly to the exploration of online communicative behaviour in the African humanities. (shrink)

The setting in which people generate ideas and work collaboratively to solve problems is gradually shifting from traditional face-to-face communities to virtual communities. Virtual communities are, therefore, becoming a new source of creative ideas. Nevertheless, online creativity is not without challenges. The main obstacle seems to be a lack of active engagement from participants within these virtual communities, resulting in a low quality and quantity of creative content when compared to traditional methods of (...) creation. Research suggests that successfully generating creative ideas online involves sustained, active engagement among collaborators. A number of studies have investigated various factors related to the generation of creative ideas within virtual communities. However, a comprehensive understanding of contributing factors remains elusive. This study examines past research on the factors that drive creative ideas generation in online creative communities through a systematic literature review. The study seeks to analyze research findings over the past decade and provide an overview of the main driving factors, research areas, research trends, and implications for future research. Web of Science and Scopus were used to identify relevant articles, while Google Scholar was used to minimize the risk of missing any valuable data related to the aim of this study. The results provide an overview of the studies examining creative ideas generation within virtual communities. By approaching the subject matter from three primary perspectives, this paper identifies influencing factors associated with the successful generation of creative ideas online. The results of the paper also provide an overview of the research methods and guiding theories adopted by current researchers. The paper concludes with research trends and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how public policies may influence the way members of virtual communities linked with social movements perceive the legitimacy of their leaders and governance structures.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on qualitative research with three Brazilian environmental education virtual communities. It adopts an interpretive approach, grounding the analysis in institutional theory.FindingsThe paper shows that a public policy of funding the studied communities has reinforced the legitimacy of some leaders and legitimated (...) more centralised decision‐making structures. The influence of the funding has endured even after the end of the respective contracts.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the paper is limited to three virtual communities in a very specific context, its conclusions may inform other studies on the institutional instruments governments may appropriate to influence the virtual interactions among members of social movements and civil society organisations and which impact their offline interactions as well.Practical implicationsThe paper calls attention to the need to discuss public policies with stakeholders, especially to permit social movements and civil society organisations to have a say in policies that may affect their social structures.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to understanding how public policies impact interactions in virtual environments and in a broader sense, and the relevance of considering the influence of institutions in online interactions. (shrink)

This article examines the relationships between gender and technology in Spanish feminist praxis online and argues that different perspectives on online feminist community-building offer distinct responses to cyberactivism, which is considered central to sustaining efforts for social change. To ascertain whether Spanish virtual communities and cyberactivism have the potential to address the challenges posed by the relations between gender and technology, we analyse feminist scholar Remedios Zafra's theoretical proposals, and the different ways in which this theory intersects with (...) the cyberactivism put forth by two feminist web portals, Ciudad de Mujeres and Mujeres en Red. We will discuss to what degree particular Spanish feminist theory and practice online adapts to or challenges utopianism regarding the liberating potential of technology. We will also examine how, in the face of critical arguments about such liberatory possibilities, two options present themselves for women's effective use of technology: inhabiting or occupying the web through the construction of feminist communities online. (shrink)

The use of WhatsApp as a means of communication is widespread amongst today‘s youth, many of whom spend hours in virtual space, in particular during the evenings and nighttime in the privacy of their own homes. This article seeks to contribute to the discussion of the dialogical language and ―conversations‖ conducted in virtual-space encounters and the way in which young people perceive this space, its affect on them, and their interrelations within it. It presents the findings of a (...) study based on a community of philosophical inquiry in which young adults students discussed the ―I‖ and ―Thou‖ (the other) and the interaction between them in a WhatsApp community. The results evince that the youth related to the virtual space in very similar fashion to Buber‘s ―I-Thou‖ concept, the language they employed to describe what happened in it enabling an expansion of the conceptualization and research language to an ―I-Space-Thou‖ model. (shrink)

The importance of enterprises significantly improving their innovation performance by working closely with customers throughout the innovation process has been emphasized in recent literature. However, the role of organizational innovation environment in customer creativity and the impact of customer knowledge matching on the innovation environment are not sufficiently explored. Based on the Social cognitive theory and Flow theory, his investigate the factors that influence enterprise innovation performance in the context of customer participation in innovation, as well as how businesses can (...) foster an online innovation environment that fosters customer creativity. The mixed-methods study, which combines qualitative and quantitative research, is used to create the scale item that measures the study’s main variables. Structural equation modeling and bootstrapping estimation was performed on survey data collected via questionnaire from 392 consumers who participated in online service innovation in an online virtual brand community between June 2018 and May 2019. The study obtain the following main results. First, the innovative environment of customer online participation in service innovation fosters customer creativity. Second, two mediation interactions exist: creative self-efficacy and positive emotions, both of which partially mediate the relationship between customer creativity and the innovation environment. Third, while customer knowledge matching influences the intermediary effect of creative self-efficacy on innovation environment and customer creativity, it has no effect on the intermediary effect of positive emotion on innovation environment and customer creativity. (shrink)

This article documents experiences of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s virtual, synchronous improvisation sessions during COVID-19 pandemic via interviews with 29 participants. Sessions included an international, gender balanced, and cross generational group of over 70 musicians all of whom were living under conditions of social distancing. All sessions were recorded using Zoom software. After 3 months of twice weekly improvisation sessions, 29 interviews with participants were undertaken, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Key themes include how the sessions provided opportunities for artistic development, (...) enhanced mood, reduced feelings of isolation, and sustained and developed community. Particular attention is placed upon how improvisation as a universal, real time, social, and collaborative process facilitates interaction, allowing the technological affordances of software (latencies, sound quality, and gallery/speaker view) and hardware (laptop, tablet, instruments, microphones, headphones, and objects in room) to become emergent properties of artistic collaborations. The extent to which this process affects new perceptual and conceptual breakthroughs for practitioners is discussed as is the crucial and innovative relationship between audio and visual elements. Analysis of edited films of the sessions highlight artistic and theoretical and conceptual issues discussed. Emphasis is given to how the domestic environment merges with technologies to createThe Theatre of Home. (shrink)

A virtual community is generally described as a group of people with shared interests, ideas, and goals in a particular digital group or virtual platform. Virtual communities have become ubiquitous in recent times, and almost everyone belongs to one or multiple virtual communities. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its associated national lockdowns, has made virtual communities more essential and a necessary part of our daily lives, whether for work and business, (...) educational purposes or keeping in touch with friends and family. Given these facts, how do we ensure that virtual communities become a true community qua community? We address this question by proposing and arguing for a ‘virtual communitarianism’—an online community that integrates essential features of traditional African communitarianism in its outlook and practice. The paper’s position is that virtual communitarianism can make for a strong ethical virtual community where members can demonstrate a strong sense of group solidarity, care and compassion towards each other. The inclusion of these virtues can bring members who often are farapart and help create a stronger community bond. This will ensure that the evolution of virtual communities does not happen without the integration of progressive African communitarian values. (shrink)

In this paper we aim at discussing cognitive and epistemic features of online communities, by the use of cognitive niche constructions theories, presenting them as virtual cognitive niches. Virtual cognitive niches can be considered as digitally-encoded collaborative distributions of diverse types of information into an environment performed by agents to aid thinking and reasoning about some target domain. Discussing this definition, we will also consider how online communities, as networks displaying a social bias, can both foster (...) civic awareness and promote problematic group-led behaviors in the virtually aggregated crowds. To support this affirmation, we will take into account the use of online communication networks during crises and we will argue that it can lead to ethically dubious consequences. (shrink)

Nowadays, a significant portion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication takes place online. The current article attends to an essential, yet often overlooked element of online CSR communication: cross-sectoral hyperlink networks. The article argues that corporations build cross-sectoral hyperlink networks with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as a form of CSR communication to manage social issues. Using social network analysis, this article analyzes the hyperlink network data between 136 corporations and 94 international NGOs. Findings show that corporations’ cross-sectoral ties serve as a (...) communication strategy to respond to salient issues and manage issues that are relevant to these corporations. NGOs’ tenure and network dynamics are also found to significantly affect the number of cross-sectoral ties built with corporations. (shrink)

This article proposes complementing actor-network theory (ANT) with Niklas Luhmann’s communication theory, in order to overcome one of ANT’s major shortcomings, namely, the lack of a conceptual repertoire to describe virtual processes such as sense-making. A highly problematic consequence of ANT’s actualism is that it cannot explain the differentiation of economic, legal, scientific, touristic, religious, medical, artistic, political and other qualities of actual entities, assemblages and relationships. By recasting Luhmann’s theory of functionally differentiated communication forms and sense-making as dealing (...) with different types of virtual attractors calling for actualizations in concrete assemblages, I propose a symmetrical understanding of societal differentiation processes as based on the co-production of virtual attractors and actual assemblages. (shrink)

The research explores a novel phenomenon in which information and communication technology (ICT), which is originally designed for knowledge transferring, may result in employees’ knowledge hiding due to increasing use intensity. Specifically, drawing upon the appraisal theory of empathy, we develop a moderated mediation model of empathy linking ICT use intensity and knowledge hiding. The hypothesized model is tested by conducting a scenario-based experimental study (Study 1, N = 194) and a multi-wave field study (Study 2, N = 350). Results (...) show that ICT use intensity is positively related to employees’ knowledge hiding through the mediating role of their empathy. Moreover, competitive goal interdependence strengthens the negative relationship between ICT use intensity and employees’ empathy, and the indirect positive effect between ICT use intensity and employees’ knowledge hiding. Overall, the research answers the questions of how and when ICT use intensity may influence employees’ knowledge hiding. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the research findings are discussed. (shrink)

Nowadays virtual reality has gained extreme popularity among adolescents around the world, thanks to the possibility they offer to create a new life for their users. Especially for teenagers affected by the hikikomori syndrome, who experience struggles in establishing communication with others, virtual reality has become a tool to forsake their “adverse” reality, shaping fictitious safe environments and creating relationships with similar-minded users. This issue of virtual reality has been depicted in recent Japanese animation, whose country is (...) mostly affected by this issue. I will show mainly two approaches to the phenomenon: the one given in the anime series Sword Art Online (2012), in which virtual reality is perceived as the only place where true communication can happen; the second is the interpretation given by director Hosoda Mamoru in his animated features Summer Wars (2009) and Belle (2021), where virtual reality is a tool to support real life’s difficulties. (shrink)

This article focuses on the study of online communities and introduces an empirical study of social media production involving an online group called “Arab Canadians”. The study builds on Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’ and argues that Facebook provides the platform for an online nation in which users, whether Canadians or prospective immigrants, interact and exchange ideas about a country whose imagined concept varies from one user to another. Facebook here is a virtual nation that offers the (...) community members an imagined sense of identity and belonging which they aspire to get. The results of the study revealed that the majority of comments carry highly positive sentiments towards Canada and its people, yet there is evidence that some comments are moderated. The study concludes that the Facebook administrator functions as a centralized gatekeeper who filters online chatter and leads the discussion to a certain direction. Building on the theory of networked gatekeeping, the study argues that vertical and horizontal flows of communication shape the online debate that takes place in this virtual space. Through a close analysis of these practices, the article sheds light on the role of social media in shaping online identities constructed around virtual nationhood. (shrink)

Several simulation projects in the area of production and logistics indicated that, although we have sophisticated input and output devices for computer supported modelling, physical models still play an important role for cognition and communication. We therefore introduce the concept of a Graspable User Interface that aims at combining two model worlds, the one inside the computer and a corresponding physical one in the outside world. Sensored user hands will couple physical objects of the real world with virtual objects, (...) thus allowing fairly unrestricted manipulation and expression. In this way modelling with real physical objects can create an abstract virtual model. Some applications of this concept are presented. A further perspective for a new action oriented communication and learning with artifacts is envisioned. (shrink)

The epidemic spreading is closely related to the spread of information, and it will coevolve with the information transmission. Considering that the network structure has a significant impact on network dynamics and the virtual contact networks have obvious community structures in reality, in this article, we built a multiplex network, which contains a community structure to explore the interplay of the coupled spread dynamics. We first use a microscopic Markov chain approach to characterize the coupled disease-awareness dynamics and then (...) analyze the effect of different factors on the coevolution of information dissemination and epidemic spreading based on the Monte Carlo simulation. The simulation results show that promoting the dissemination of information is indeed conducive to suppressing the spread of disease, but changing the process of disease transmission has no obvious effect on the information dissemination. The analysis also reveals that increasing the information transmission rate or decreasing the information recovery rate can promote the spread of information and inhibit the spread of diseases. In addition, taking preventive behaviors or decreasing the long-distance jump also helps slow the epidemic spreading. (shrink)

There is considerable controversy concerning the ability of the Internet to provide communal experiences. This article looks at the ability of the World Wide Web to foster religious community, particularly from a Christian perspective. It looks at the nature of religion and community and shows to what extent the Internet has and has not been successful in recreating religious community. It looks at the reaction of two particular groups of users and categorizes Web sites into five types: research sites, extensions (...) of local community, independent sites, spiritual retreats, and online worship. Finally it discusses the limitations of disembodied experience and argues that most individuals use the media within these limitations. (shrink)

The past decade has seen the development of a perspective holding that technology is socially constructed. This paper examines the social construction of one group of technologies: systems for computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). It describes the design of CSCW in Japan, with particular attention to the influence of culture on the design process. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the argument that culture is an important factor in technology design, despite commonly held assumptions about the neutrality and objectivity of (...) science and technology. The paper further argues that, by looking at CSCW systems as texts which reflect the context of their production and the society from which they come, we may be better able to understand the transformations that operate when these texts are ‘read’ in the contexts of their implementation. (shrink)