Why did Nobody Reply to Me? A Keyword Analysis of Initiating Posts and Lone Posts in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Discussions

It is a common phenomenon that online discussion spaces are overabundant with lone posts; in other words, few posts receive replies from others. Admittedly, circumstantial factors and content affect whether a post receives replies. Yet, linguistic features within a post might also play a role in inviting replies. To investigate this hypothesis, a keyword analysis comparing initiating posts, which receive replies, to lone posts, which do not receive replies, was conducted. The posts were from the discussion in massive open online courses (MOOCs). MOOC discussion is one type of computer-mediated communication (CMC), with an emphasis on learning and is typically monitored by course facilitators. The keyword analysis revealed that initiating posts were often constructed in a question format, with hedges and indefinite pronouns to open up a dialogue and invite others to pitch in, whereas lone posts tended to be reflective and monoglossic in nature, yet with positive sentiments

MoodBar: Increasing new user retention in Wikipedia through lightweight socialization

Socialization in online communities allows existing members to welcome and recruit newcomers, introduce them to community norms and practices, and sustain their early participation. However, socializing newcomers does not come for free: in large communities, socialization can result in a significant workload for mentors and is hard to scale. In this study we present results from an experiment that measured the effect of a lightweight socialization tool on the activity and retention of newly registered users attempting to edit for the first time Wikipedia. Wikipedia is struggling with the retention of newcomers and our results indicate that a mechanism to elicit lightweight feedback and to provide early mentoring to newcomers improves their chances of becoming long-term contributors.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for presentation at CSCW'1

From participation to dropout

The academic e-learning practice has to deal with various participation patterns and types of online learners with different support needs. The online instructors are challenged to recognize these and react accordingly. Among the participation patterns, special attention is requested by dropouts, which can perturbate online collaboration. Therefore we are in search of a method of early identification of participation patterns and prediction of dropouts. To do this, we use a quantitative view of participation that takes into account only observable variables. On this background we identify in a field study the participation indicators that are relevant for the course completion, i.e. produce significant differences between the completion and dropout sub-groups. Further we identify through cluster analysis four participation patterns with different support needs. One of them is the dropout cluster that could be predicted with an accuracy of nearly 80%. As a practical consequence, this study recommends a simple, easy-to-implement prediction method for dropouts, which can improve online teaching. As a theoretical consequence, we underline the role of the course didactics for the definition of participation, and call for refining previous attrition models

Exploring the Relationship between Membership Turnover and Productivity in Online Communities

One of the more disruptive reforms associated with the modern Internet is the emergence of online communities working together on knowledge artefacts such as Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. Recently it has become clear that these initiatives are vulnerable because of problems with membership turnover. This study presents a longitudinal analysis of 891 WikiProjects where we model the impact of member turnover and social capital losses on project productivity. By examining social capital losses we attempt to provide a more nuanced analysis of member turnover. In this context social capital is modelled from a social network perspective where the loss of more central members has more impact. We find that only a small proportion of WikiProjects are in a relatively healthy state with low levels of membership turnover and social capital losses. The results show that the relationship between social capital losses and project performance is U-shaped, and that member withdrawal has significant negative effect on project outcomes. The results also support the mediation of turnover rate and network density on the curvilinear relationship

Using Text Similarity to Detect Social Interactions not Captured by Formal Reply Mechanisms

In modeling social interaction online, it is important to understand when people are reacting to each other. Many systems have explicit indicators of replies, such as threading in discussion forums or replies and retweets in Twitter. However, it is likely these explicit indicators capture only part of people's reactions to each other, thus, computational social science approaches that use them to infer relationships or influence are likely to miss the mark. This paper explores the problem of detecting non-explicit responses, presenting a new approach that uses tf-idf similarity between a user's own tweets and recent tweets by people they follow. Based on a month's worth of posting data from 449 ego networks in Twitter, this method demonstrates that it is likely that at least 11% of reactions are not captured by the explicit reply and retweet mechanisms. Further, these uncaptured reactions are not evenly distributed between users: some users, who create replies and retweets without using the official interface mechanisms, are much more responsive to followees than they appear. This suggests that detecting non-explicit responses is an important consideration in mitigating biases and building more accurate models when using these markers to study social interaction and information diffusion.Comment: A final version of this work was published in the 2015 IEEE 11th International Conference on e-Science (e-Science

Political Communication and Influence Through Twitter = Politikai kommunikáció és befolyásolás a Twitteren keresztül

Politicians are now learning that along with advertising on conventional media, they need to invest in online applications in order to get the attention of voters, particularly the youths. Among various microblogging services, Twitter is an essential part of popular culture. Today, Twitter is widely utilised not only to distribute information, but also political views and opinions. Therefore, politicians have turned to social media, particularly to Twitter, as a new form of political communication. The article attempts to capture the ways of using the potential of Twitter in communication strategies. It argues that in some occasions, Twitter plays a specific role in allowing politicians to monitor current political affairs and to interact with people, but in others, it is often employed as a personal branding strategy and not only during the election campaigns. It concludes with an insight that sentiment may impact the political opinion-making process which may lead to electoral intervention

CROWDSOURCING AS A MOBILE SERVICE - CASE STUDY: PUBLISHING PHOTOGRAPHY

Crowdsourcing- a method for companies to utilize the power of the crowd through internet-based platforms- is a relatively new phenomenon. When offered as a mobile service, crowdsourcing transcends the spatial, temporal and contextual barriers of traditional job requirements, offering an ubiquitous service and access, and providing a suite of both utilitarian and hedonic functions. IS literature indicates that users? extrinsic motivation is a stronger determinant to use utilitarian systems, while intrinsic motivation is a stronger determinant for hedonic systems. However, when the crowdsourced service, such as photography, is both hedonic and utilitarian by nature, users? perceptions of the service are unclear. Earlier research reports mixed results: while some studies suggest that tangible rewards can have an impact on the intrinsic motivation, other studies suggest the opposite. Hence, our study focuses on how the users perceive mobile crowdsourcing services, what motivates them to participate, and how the financial reward affects their intention to participate. In this paper, we outline an ongoing study of a company in Finnish publishing industry crowdsourcing photography. After interviews with the company executives, we will next conduct a series of interviews with the users, and finally, conduct a quasi-experiment to test the developed theoretical model

An Exploration of Phishing Information Sharing: A Heuristic-Systematic Approach

Phishing is an attempt to acquire sensitive information from a user by malicious means. The losses due to phishing have exceeded a trillion dollars globally. Social media has provided an alternate to sharing information about phishing online. However, very little attention has been paid to phishing information sharing on social media. In this paper, we explore the risk characteristics of phishing information on social media, and investigate its effect on people’s sharing of information regarding phishing. We address the research questions: (a) how do people decide which phishing information to share? (b) what aspects of phishing information are more or less consequential in influencing a user to share it? The findings suggest that the phishing messages that afford coping strategies, and come from users with higher credibility are likely to achieve higher level of sharing

Donor Retention in Online Crowdfunding Communities: A Case Study of DonorsChoose.org

Online crowdfunding platforms like DonorsChoose.org and Kickstarter allow specific projects to get funded by targeted contributions from a large number of people. Critical for the success of crowdfunding communities is recruitment and continued engagement of donors. With donor attrition rates above 70%, a significant challenge for online crowdfunding platforms as well as traditional offline non-profit organizations is the problem of donor retention. We present a large-scale study of millions of donors and donations on DonorsChoose.org, a crowdfunding platform for education projects. Studying an online crowdfunding platform allows for an unprecedented detailed view of how people direct their donations. We explore various factors impacting donor retention which allows us to identify different groups of donors and quantify their propensity to return for subsequent donations. We find that donors are more likely to return if they had a positive interaction with the receiver of the donation. We also show that this includes appropriate and timely recognition of their support as well as detailed communication of their impact. Finally, we discuss how our findings could inform steps to improve donor retention in crowdfunding communities and non-profit organizations.Comment: preprint version of WWW 2015 pape

Users’ Participation Motivation and Behavior Patterns in Online Health Community: A Game Theory Viewpoint

Online health communities (OHC) are one of the most promising health-related social media services that have been developed, increasing in numbers and users in the past decade. Studies show that patients can benefit from participating in OHC, including obtaining information and knowledge, receiving support, and releasing mental stress. The purpose of this study is to identify the motivation behind users’ participation and to understand their behavior patterns across time in the online health community. A game theoretic model is used