Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Visualizing Personal Relations in Online Communities

  • Conference paper
Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems (AH 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 4018))

  • 1421 Accesses

Abstract

A hard challenge facing developers of online communities is attaining a critical mass of members and subsequently sustaining their participation. We propose a new mechanism for motivating participation in interest-based online communities, which engages non-contributing members (lurkers) by modeling and visualizing the asymmetrical relations formed when reading, evaluating, or commenting other community members’ contributions. The mechanism is based on ideas from open user modeling, a new concept of “community energy,” with a mechanism of rating contributions and visualizing the rank of contributions in the community interface.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Preece, J.: Sociability and usability in online communities: determining and measuring success. Behaviour & Information Technology 20(5), 347–356 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Maloney-Krichmar, D., Preece, J.: A multilevel analysis of sociability, usability, and community dynamics in an online health community. ACM Trans. Comput. -Hum. Interact 12(2), 201–232 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Michele Boyd, D.: Friendster and publicly articulated social networking. In: CHI 2004 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems Vienna, Austria, pp. 1279–1282. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Johnson, C.M.: A survey of current research on online communities of practice. The Internet and Higher Education 4(1), 45–60 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Wellman, B., Salaff, J., Dimitrova, D., Garton, L., Gulia, M., Haythornthwaite, C.: Computer networks as social networks: Collaborative work, telework, and virtual community. Annual Review of Sociology 22, 213–238 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Nonnecke, B., Preece, J.: Lurker demographics: counting the silent. In: CHI 2000 Conference Proceedings. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2000. The Future is Here, pp. 73–80. ACM, The Hague (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Rheingold, H.: The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Reading (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Smith, M., Kollock, P.: Communities in Cyberspace. Routledge, London (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Preece, J., Nonnecke, B., Andrews, D.: The top five reasons for lurking: improving community experiences for everyone. Computers in Human Behavior 20(2), 201–223 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Takahashi, M., Fujimoto, M., Yamasaki, N.: The active lurker: influence of an in-house online community on its outside environment. In: Proceedings of the 2003 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, pp. 1–10. ACM Press, New York (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Preece, J., Maloney-Krichmar, D.: Online communities: focusing on sociability and usability, pp. 596–620. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Grudin, J.: Groupware and social dynamics: eight challenges for developers. Communications of the Acm 37(1), 92–105 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Group Processes. Malden. Blackwell Publishers, Massachusetts (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kraut, R.E.: Applying Social Psychology Theory to the Problems of Group Work. In: Carrol, J.M. (ed.) HCI Models, Theories and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science, pp. 325–356. Morgan Kaufmann, New York (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Beenen, G., Ling, K., Wang, X., Chang, K., Frankowski, D., Resnick, P., Kraut, R.E.: Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities. In: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work Chicago, Illinois, USA, pp. 212–221. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Dholakia, U.M., Bagozzi, R.P., Pearo, L.K.: A social influence model of consumer participation in network- and small-group-based virtual communities. International Journal of Research in Marketing 21(3), 241–263 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Cheng, R., Vassileva, J.: Adaptive Incentive Mechanism for Sustainable Online Community, pp. 152–159. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Bull, S., Brna, P., Dimitrova, V.: LeMoRe (2006), http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/bull/lemore/

  19. Granovetter, M.: The Strength of Weak Ties. Current Contents/Social & Behavioral Sciences 49, 24 (1986)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

    Andrew Webster & Julita Vassileva

Authors
  1. Andrew Webster
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Julita Vassileva
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Knowledge and Data Engineering Group, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Vincent P. Wade

  2. School of Computer and Information Science, University of South Australia, Australia

    Helen Ashman

  3. Adaptive Information Cluster, School of Computer Science & Informatics, University College Dublin, Ireland

    Barry Smyth

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Webster, A., Vassileva, J. (2006). Visualizing Personal Relations in Online Communities. In: Wade, V.P., Ashman, H., Smyth, B. (eds) Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems. AH 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4018. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11768012_24

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11768012_24

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-34696-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-34697-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics