Signaling Diversity and Inclusion for Open Source Project Health

Open source projects often consist of mostly white, male, and English-speaking software developers. For the past decade, women and people from minority backgrounds have sought to bring more diversity to open source projects and make them more inclusive. This presentation summarizes research findings of how projects signal diversity and inclusion to attract these people. A key finding is that signals for diversity and inclusion are wanted, but projects struggle to put them into practice. The presentation discusses implications for signaling theory and open source projects

When Do Likes Create Bias?

The rise of online communities has ushered in a new era of content sharing with platforms that serve many functions and overcome the geographic and synchronous limitations of traditional word-of-mouth communications. Community-based question answering sites (CQA) have emerged as convenient platforms for users to exchange knowledge and opinions with others. Research on CQA has primarily focused on engaging members to voluntarily contribute to these communities. Helpfulness ratings and “likes” are one mechanism platforms can use to engage members, but these subjective evaluations can also create bias. In this ERF paper, the elaboration likelihood model is applied to better understand when bias can occur with these platforms. An experimental design and a planned data collection are reported

Network Ties and Their Effect on Employee Collaboration in Enterprise Social Networks: A Review and Research Agenda

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth and widespread adoption of social media technologies across all industries. Despite the growing importance of enterprise social networks (ESN) in creating social capital and facilitating innovation, there has been limited research in examining the role of employee relationships (ties) in these networks. Earlier studies have reported that the network structure can enhance or restrict employee behaviour to a great extent and that those who implement ESN should consider how network structure can support positive collaboration behaviour, rather than restrict it. Accordingly, we propose that the understanding of network ties and their effect on employees’ collaboration will help in influencing the design and use of ESN in a way that it will help in building productive and sustainable employee collaboration. This paper reviews the existing literature to understand the relationship between network ties and collaboration outcomes and proposes a future research agenda

Online Leadership for Open Source Project Success: Evidence from the GitHub Blockchain Projects

Blockchain technology has become increasingly popular in recent years. However, only 8% of blockchain open source projects are maintained actively on GitHub. Drawing on the online leadership literature, this study seeks to understand the correlation between leader characteristics and success of blockchain open source projects from the behavioral (knowledge contribution), structural (social capital) and cognitive (openness orientation) dimensions. Considering the unique decentralization nature of blockchain, this study further investigates the contingency effect of blockchain archetypes with empirical evidence from GitHub. Our findings provide novel insights for understanding the determinants of blockchain open source project success and leadership behaviors in the online community

Instructors as Designated Leaders for Fostering Online Engagement: The Case of Online Learning Communities

With the increasing need to understand pedagogy online, but also with the understanding that the role of designated leaders in online communities has not been examined, the paper presents a study that aims to examine how instructors in online learning platforms may impact, through their presence, participants’ online engagement. The theoretical foundations of the study are based on a typology of different types of leaders’ presence in the online context. In this research in progress paper, the research design of the study is described and expected contributions in the areas of online communities and eLearning are identified

Review Helpfulness as a Function of discrete negative emotions and image colorfulness

Given that helpful reviews are valuable to both customers and e-commerce platforms, a better understanding of the antecedents for review helpfulness offers clear benefits to review writers and online vendors. This paper proposes two research questions: How will negative discrete emotions expressed through review text (i.e., fear, anger, sadness, and disgust) influence review helpfulness? And how will review textual emotions and image colorfulness of review interactively influence review helpfulness? Using online review of computer related products sold via Amazon in the past five years, we found that anger increase online review helpfulness, while sadness and disgust decrease the helpfulness. We also found the moderating effects of review image colorfulness on the relationship between discrete emotions and online review helpfulness. Our research advances the existing online review literature by proposing the importance of discrete emotions and its interactive effect with review image colorfulness in review helpfulness

Conflating Relevance with Practical Significance and Other Issues: Commentary on Sen, Smith, and Van Note’s “Statistical Significance Versus Practical Importance in Information Systems Research”

Expanding on the current debate on the issues of statistical and practical significance in information systems research, where the article by Sen, Smith, and Van Note is a recent contribution, this commentary cautions against conflating relevance with practical significance. We emphasize that relevance is 1) about the real-world usefulness of research findings rather than their impressiveness for the researcher audience, 2) an essential quality of research spanning beyond its findings and not merely limited to statistical studies, and 3) determined by nonacademics rather than academics. We also comment on other aspects of the article by Sen et al., such as the term “practical importance,” the treatment of effect size measures, and the presentation of “marginal effects.

Doing public health differently: How can public health departments engage with local communities through social media interventions?

Objectives This paper evaluates a collaborative intervention between public health professionals and local social media administrators, in which the social media site Facebook was used with a view to strengthening engagement with and, dissemination of, core messages and building trust and resilience within local communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study design A qualitative design was used, exploring the research question: how does collaboration between public health professionals and local social network group administrators create community engagement during a global crisis? Methods Fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with public health staff and online group administrators. Data was analysed using framework analysis. Results Collaboration between public health professionals and local group administrators created both opportunities and challenges. Local group administrators had wide reach and trust within the local community, but message credibility was enhanced through local authority involvement. Such collaborations contain inherent tensions due to perceived risks to social capital and independence but can be successful if receiving strong risk-tolerant support from the local authority. Findings are discussed in the context of Bourdieu's theory of social capital to examine how public health information can be delivered by trusted social media actors in communication tailored to the local community. Conclusions Social media provides new channels of communication for delivery of public health messages, enabling new ways of working which create long-term engagement and community building. Although the intervention was developed quickly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, participants felt it could be mobilised to address a wider range of issues

Collaboration in Social Hobby Groups: Transferring Qualities of Teamwork from the Social Sphere to the Professional Sphere

Workplace collaboration has been the subject of much research and writing. Social collaboration can help inform our understanding of how people prefer to work together and should be studied for its aspects that could be transferred to the professional sphere. This research examines how members in social hobby groups collaborate with each other and what aspects of that collaboration can be applied to the workplace. I observed and surveyed five local hobby groups to better understand how the members worked together and what made this type of socializing appealing to members. One of the primary aspects of this social collaboration is a feeling of belonging in a social sphere. This can be brought into the professional sphere by allotting more time for employees to socialize in non-work capacities and through business leaders promoting a positive working atmosphere

How does Doctors’ Information Sharing Behavior Influence Reputation in Online Health Consultation Platform?

The online health consultation platforms provide a unique context for doctors to share health information privately and publicly. However, how doctors’ reputation is shaped in the context of online information sharing has been largely neglected in the current literature. This study explores the relationship between information sharing and reputation by distinguishing private and public information sharing behaviours and investigating the contingent roles of doctors’ professional and online seniority. Data from a leading online consultation platform in China was obtained to test the research model and associated hypotheses. The results reveal that both private and public sharing can contribute to doctors’ online reputation and the effects of the two information sharing behaviours are different about doctors within different professional and online seniority. This study contributes to the literature on health information sharing and online reputation development