An Investigation in to Virtual World Adoption

Virtual worlds are emerging in importance as more multinational firms are investing heavily in these emerging communities. Although much excitement has been built up around the idea of virtual worlds, a gap exists between those who sign up and those who engage in the virtual world. Our analysis of the gap between those who initiate an action and have signed up to join a virtual world and those who follow through and ultimately engage the community on a regular basis derives from a lack of adoption. Through the use of a subject matter expert study, we identified 35 factors to explain adoption, which then explain through the use of seven psychological theories. After discussing and integrating these seven factors, we test our model through a test of 223 new users of Second Life. The results from our empirical test of these seven theories are presented, and we conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of understanding virtual world adoption

Transition in place: dynamics, possibilities, and constraints

The Transition Movement is a translocal phenomenon circulated through transnational grassroots networks. This study explores the geographies of the Transition Movement with a theoretical framework that perceives it as both a social movement and a grassroots innovation. Participant-observation of Transition Salt Lake (TSL), located in the suburban metropolis of Salt Lake City, Utah, was conducted, as the United States remains a largely understudied country in regards to this particular movement. In this pursuit, we asked: (i) how and what this transition initiative draws from geographically extensive and intensive relations, (ii) how it combines place-specific elements and generalized models (embeddedness), and (iii) how this impacts the success of the transition initiative and how these impacts (positive or negative) are generated. Place, space, and scale played a large role in defining the nature, dynamics, possibilities, and constraints of this transition initiative. Specifically, geographically intensive and extensive relations were critical for the mobilization of complementary resources. The Transition model was found to be flexible, allowing for the initiative to adopt those elements that worked in place and to focus on locally relevant topics. TSL faced many challenges identified by previous researchers regarding finances, participation, diversity, and intragroup competition. While networking with other similar groups, TSL demonstrated that fertile environments of activism are incubatory pools for grassroots innovations and social movements, and a trade-off was found with competition for resources between local groups

Making connections and promoting the profession: social media use by World Federation of Occupational Therapy member organisations

BACKGROUND: World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) member organisations comprise 77 national occupational therapy organisations across the world. Each national organisation interacts with its members and the public using diverse methods. Increasingly, national organisations are broadening their communication methods. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to examine if and how occupational therapy organisations are using social media for communication, and if so, the types of concerns or barriers they experience and what role they anticipate social media might play in the near future. METHODS: An online survey was developed; 57 of 77 WFOT member organisations responded. FINDINGS: This study identified that WFOT national organisations are using social media, to varying degrees, with or without an individual formally assigned to manage social media. Respondents reported that they used social media to: communicate with members, promote the organisation and promote the profession. Commonly expressed needs included assistance with guide- lines for ethical social media use, developing technical expertise, and recognition of limits of time and competing priorities. Recommendations arising from this research are at the global, national, local and individual levels and incorporate active dissemination and pure diffusion approaches. Taking steps to increase the use of social media could indirectly impact occu- pational therapy practice through enhancing organisations’ abilities to support practitioners to enhance their practice. LIMITATIONS AND RECOMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: Although 57% of WFOT member organisations returned usable responses, there may be some additional perspectives that were not captured. It would be helpful to contact non-responding organisations to explore their social media use and plans. Further research could examine how future initiatives put in place by WFOT impact social media use by member organisations.Published versio

Social Software, Groups, and Governance

Formal groups play an important role in the law. Informal groups largely lie outside it. Should the law be more attentive to informal groups? The paper argues that this and related questions are appearing more frequently as a number of computer technologies, which I collect under the heading social software, increase the salience of groups. In turn, that salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. The paper suggests that there may be important social benefits associated with informal groups, and that the law should move towards a framework for encouraging and recognizing them. Such a framework may be organized along three dimensions by which groups arise and sustain themselves: regulating places, things, and stories

Territory, Temporality and Clustered Europeanization. IHS Political Science Series: 2006, No. 109

Non-convergence amongst the EU member states, despite a wide range of integration effects, has come to be accepted as conventional wisdom in the Europeanization debate. This paper takes issue with the stress on non-convergence and makes a case for ‘clustered Europeanization’. Clustering is promoted by two variables that have so far received little attention in Europeanization research: territory and temporality. Territory influences Europeanization through (a) ‘families of nations’ and (b) center-periphery structures in an expanding European political space. Temporality matters, in particular, through the ‘relative time of accession’, i.e. when countries joined (c) in relation to their domestic political and economic development and (d) in relation to the phase of European integration. While (a) and (c) promote intra-regional commonalities in Europeanization-related domestic variables, (b) and (d) highlight inter-regional differences in the integration experience. This regional distinctness of both domestic and integration variables, in turn, promotes clustered Europeanization

Users\u27 understandings of the virtual economy in social virtual worlds: consumption and entrepreneurship of virtual goods

Social virtual worlds (SVWs) such as Second Life have gained immense popularity during the last decade. Their popularity is reflected in the explosive growth of the in-world economy, which is mainly supported by users’ consumption of virtual goods and entrepreneurial behavior. Users’ economic behavior has increased the size of the virtual economy to reach over $1B in the United States in 2009 (Nicholson 2009). Given that virtual consumption and entrepreneurship have become an important part of everyday virtual life in SVWs, understanding these two types of economic activities is an essential aspect to understanding user behavior in SVWs. This research aims at investigating the meanings of virtual consumption and entrepreneurship for users. The research consists of two independent essays. In the first essay about virtual consumption, I examine users’ understandings of virtual consumption through core-periphery analysis of its social representation. 154 Second Life users participated in the web-based survey for this study. I also identify user goals for virtual consumption by using means-end chain analysis, based on interviews with 93 Second Life users. The second essay on the topic of virtual entrepreneurship examines the collective meanings of virtual entrepreneurship and their relationship with the collective meanings of SVWs. To understand the meanings of virtual entrepreneurship, the core-periphery structure of social representations of virtual entrepreneurship is analyzed, based on interviews with 24 Second Life entrepreneurs. The meanings of virtual entrepreneurship are explained and compared with the central meanings of SVWs, identified from 101 newspaper articles on SVWs from 2005 to 2009. The results show that virtual consumption penetrates extensively into the virtual life of users and make their virtual experience in SVWs much richer; that virtual entrepreneurship is institutionalized in SVWs, and the key meanings of SVWs are well translated into the meanings of virtual entrepreneurship. This research contributes in providing fundamental knowledge about virtual consumption and entrepreneurship and further suggests potential theoretical frameworks for future research. Implications for SVW service providers and producers and sellers of virtual goods are also identified. Another contribution of the research is to demonstrate alternative qualitative research approaches combined with quantitative analyses

Social networking and digital gaming media convergence : classification and its consequences for appropriation

Within the field of Information Systems, a good proportion of research is concerned with the work organisation and this has, to some extent, restricted the kind of application areas given consideration. Yet, it is clear that information and communication technology deployments beyond the work organisation are acquiring increased importance in our lives. With this in mind, we offer a field study of the appropriation of an online play space known as Habbo Hotel. Habbo Hotel, as a site of media convergence, incorporates social networking and digital gaming functionality. Our research highlights the ethical problems such a dual classification of technology may bring. We focus upon a particular set of activities undertaken within and facilitated by the space – scamming. Scammers dupe members with respect to their ‘Furni’, virtual objects that have online and offline economic value. Through our analysis we show that sometimes, online activities are bracketed off from those defined as offline and that this can be related to how the technology is classified by members – as a social networking site and/or a digital game. In turn, this may affect members’ beliefs about rights and wrongs. We conclude that given increasing media convergence, the way forward is to continue the project of educating people regarding the difficulties of determining rights and wrongs, and how rights and wrongs may be acted out with respect to new technologies of play online and offline

The Metadata Education and Research Information Commons (MERIC): A Collaborative Teaching and Research Initiative

The networked environment forced a sea change in Library and Information Science (LIS) education. Most LIS programs offer a mixed-mode of instruction that integrates online learning materials with more traditional classroom pedagogical methods and faculty are now responsible for developing content and digital learning objects. The teaching commons in a networked environment is one way to share, modify and repurpose learning objects while reducing the costs to educational institutions of developing course materials totally inhouse. It also provides a venue for sharing ideas, practices, and expertise in order to provide the best learning experience for students. Because metadata education has been impacted by rapid changes and metadata research is interdisciplinary and diffuse, the Metadata Education and Research Information Commons (MERIC) initiative aims to provide a virtual environment for sharing and collaboration within the extensive metadata community. This paper describes the development of MERIC from its origin as a simple clearinghouse proof-of-concept project to a service-oriented teaching and research commons prototype. The problems of enablers and barriers to participation and collaboration are discussed and the need for specific community building research is cited as critical for the success of MERIC within a broad metadata community

The Innovative Performance of Alliance Block Members: Evidence from the Microelectronics Industry

The primary goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of the complex relationship between the positioning of companies in alliance networks and their innovative performance. In particular, we expect that a firm's innovative performance depends partly on its position in specific network settings (block membership or nonblock membership), with additional effects caused by the technology positioning strategies firms pursue in terms of technological specialization in alliance blocks. Alliance groups derive their competitive advantage from their superior and particular technologies, which they develop and exploit together in the alliance blocks. Incorporating this moderating effect of the degree of technological specialization in alliance blocks (exploitation or exploration) seems to give more insight in the contextual issues in this stream of literature.strategic technology alliances, alliance block membership strategy, microelectronics industry, innovative performance, technology strategies