Explaining online communities’ contribution to socio-economic development

In recent times, online communities are emerging as a potential source of information technology-led socio-economic development by enabling new generative mechanisms. Existing studies provide useful insights yet do not recognize the contributions of online communities in achieving socio-economic development. To address this knowledge gap, this paper documents a netnography study conducted on an online community for teaching the youth how to earn income online legitimately. We applied the theoretical notion of IT affordances to examine the possibilities for socio-economic action via online communities in the context of a developing country. Preliminary findings show how the online community contributes to socio-economic development by fostering collaboration, information sharing, and learning leading to income generation

Pre-service EFL teachers’ online participation, interaction, and social presence

Participation in online communities is an increasing need for future language teachers and their professional development. Through such participation, they can experience and develop an awareness of the behaviors required to facilitate their future learners’ participation in online learning. This article investigates participation, interaction patterns, and social presence (SP) levels of pre-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in online communication within a longitudinal blended learning setting. A secondary aim of this article is to explore social network analysis (SNA) as an alternative method to measure SP. Data analysis included calculation of number of forum entries and words, qualitative analysis of interaction patterns, content analysis, and SNA. The results indicated that an online course on tutoring skills and SP improved pre-service EFL teachers’ online participation skills. Increased interaction and a more cohesive network were observed as the course progressed. The findings are significant in that they suggest a relationship between content analysis for SP (especially the interactive dimension) and SNA measures (centrality, influence, and prestige), implicating SNA as an emerging research method for the investigation of SP. This article concludes with future research perspectives and suggestions for EFL teacher training

Success for whom? A probe into user experiences of online communities of interests

The online community (OC) plays an important role in modern people's daily lives. Successful OCs can meet users' needs for interest, relationship, fantasy, or transaction, and can create information value, experiential value, social value, or transaction value for the organizers. However, it's not easy to explain why some OCs are successful and some are not. OC success has been examined by researchers from different perspectives, such as the social perspective, the system perspective, or the organizer perspective. Studies from these perspectives have suggested that users play a key role in the success of an OC. Yet, understanding of user experiences in OCs from their own perspective was insufficient and fragmented. Most studies often presumed that the users share the same goal and perspective as organizers regarding OC success, while some empirical findings suggested otherwise. The research aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of OC success from the user perspective. Emphasizing users' active and subjective participation, this research applied design probe to delve deeper and closer into user activities, thoughts, and emotions that traditional research methods were rarely able to. The research yielded rich and texturized information on user experiences about OCs of interests. The research findings showed: 1) the user experience of OCs of interests is an interactive combination of various OCs, offline events, and activities around their own interests or goals, instead of an isolated experience in each OC as previous studies tend to consider; 2) users' perceived success of an OC is also based on the holistic experience around their interests or goals, instead of based on a single OC; 3) online and offline activities are interconnected in the building of users’ social relationships. The research suggests more researches of OC success from the user perspective, separate from the organizer perspective. The research also suggests future studies to aim at a clearer definition and measurement of OC success from the user perspective