Analyzing the PVCs Documents: A Multimodal Rate-based Approach to Understand Community’s Goals and Values

A significant amount of modern professional communication takes place in the so-called Virtual Communities of Practice or Professional Virtual Communities (PVCs): social systems of individuals who use Information Technologies to mediate their relationships and facilitate knowledge exchange and generation. In current research we analyze one of the biggest Russian IT-PVCs, Habrahabr.ru. The community’s official goal is connecting the IT-specialists; communication takes form of users articles and comments; users can rate the articles, the comments and the other users themselves. Using the number of SNA instruments, community’s metadata, linguistics statistics and discourse analysis we show the structure of the community, main topics within the professional field, and find the core ideas and values which “paste together” the communities members

USES OF WEB 2.0 FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANZIATIONS: MUTIPLE CASE STUDIES

Web 2.0 is a set of Internet-based applications that harness network effects by facilitating collaborative andparticipative computing. Despite widespread popularity of Web 2.0 tools at the consumer level, it is still not well isunderstood how Web 2.0 is used by enterprises for Knowledge Management (KM). Using multiple case studies, ourresearch addresses this critical gap in the literature and provides examples of uses of Web 2.0 for KM at theindividual, project and group level in three leading IT organizations. Findings of our research will help otherorganizations to adopt Web 2,0 for KM

The Paradox of Popularity: Why Popularity Does Not Signal Participation

Although strong ties are typically formed in shared settings, we know little about the characteristics of settings that attract and retain people. Meanwhile, the Internet has broadened the search for settings. As people turn to the web to find local, offline social settings to join, simple, searchable features– notably location, interest, size and age–guide their choices. Whether such features are helpful for establishing meaningful social relations has not been empirically tested. Using unique data on participation in online to offline communities, we explore the characteristics that attract members and the features that aid in their retention. We find that, although prospective members seek large and established groups when searching for organizations, such groups are less likely to foster community through repeated participation

System Design for an Online Social Networking App with a Notification and Recommender System to Build Social Capital in a University Setting

Social capital in higher education commuter institutions may be declining because fewer students remain on campus. Social capital is the network of relationships in a group. Higher social capital is derived from broader and more complex networks. Social networks can grow because members who belong to a particular group possess a sense of community. If students spend less time on campus, their sense of community may decrease, because they would be less likely to participate in the community. This puts Higher Ed commuter institutions at a disadvantage in terms of generating and maintaining social capital. We investigate the possibility to counter this disadvantage by actively promoting participating in an Online Social Network (OSN); specifically, with the use of a Notification and Recommender System (NARS) in an OSN via a mobile platform. Our results suggest that introducing a purposefully designed OSN has the potential to facilitate creation of structural and relational social capital, but that it might not have an effect on cognitive social capital

Shifting paradigms for fashion: from total to global to smart consumer experience

This review discusses how consumers, the retail industry, and business strategies contribute to the fashion paradigm shift from Total to Global (TCE) to Smart Consumer Experience (SCE) concepts

A Hermeneutic Phenomenological study of Online Community Participation Applications of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

Online communities are increasingly playing a major role in the internet market. They have become an integrated part of internet users' interests and achievements. Understanding the factors which encourage individuals to participate in such communities, will serve as the principal guideline for the founders in assisting them to obtain requisite approvals to develop their business goals, plans and procedures. This paper uses a mixed methodology in order to identify the strongest motivational paths towards online community participation. A Hermeneutic Phenomenological approach has been applied in order to illustrate users' lived experience and extract the motivations from deep semi-structured interviews with interdisciplinary experts in the fields of psychology, consumer behavior, Information technology and e-commerce. In this paper, the application of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs), as an innovative approach in modelling consumer motivations for online community participation has been discussed. Although motivations have been widely studied over the past few years, no one has focused on the causal relations between them. This study gives a comprehensive understanding of causal relations-to determine whether changes in one variable result in changes in another-and their strengths as well as strongest paths toward online community participation which helps decision-makers reach the desirable level of user's participation in online communities