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.
Download from: This Link
Cite as: Bishop, J. (2007). Increasing participation in online communities: A framework for human-computer interaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(4), 1881-1893.
Good blog, where did you come up with the knowledge in this piece of content? I’m glad I found it though, ill be checking back soon to see what other articles you have.
lots of blah blah and lit review, but some interesting stuff buried in the blabbidyblab…
on designing for perceived affordances:
“Developing systems that offer perceived affordances is another way of encouraging participation in online communities, as is engaging an actor in a state of flow, whereby they will experience intemperance or even deference. However, this may mean that individuals will act out less positive desires, such as vengeance, and flame other community members that offend them.”
An interesting discussion of the characteristics of online communities of their time, which is to say prior to the advent of Web 2.0. Bishop describes the dynamics of human interactions carried out in online communities.