Networked, Collaborative, and Activist News Communities Online: A Case Study of Reddit and Daily Kos

Participatory democracy depends on formations of community and social relations, places and spaces for critical discourse, and the organizational and technical capacity for collective action. This study seeks to better understand how these processes are at work in the virtual realm, and more broadly examine the changing nature of political information and discourse in the online context. Toward this end, I examine two sites that embody different yet highly successful models of user participation, collective content production, and increasingly, political action: the political blogging community of Daily Kos and the social news site Reddit. This study is based on three broad theoretical frameworks of community, discourse, and action. I use work by Michele Willson (2006) to explore how community exists in the virtual realm. Drawing upon the scholarship of Jurgen Habermas (1991) and more recent adaptations and extensions of Habermasian public sphere theory from Aaron Barlow (2006), I ask can online communities set the foundation for a public spheres, and if so, how do they function as virtual public spheres? Building upon understandings of online community and virtual public sphere(s), I utilize work by Manuel Castells (1997) and Jeffrey Juris (2005) to understand how community and discourse can enable collective action. These lines of analysis provide the structure through which I examine Daily Kos and Reddit. Using ethnographic methods, I place the voices and perspectives of users within this theoretical structure to produce a comprehensive look at the function of collaborative online political information communities

DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!: Managing troublemakers in magazines' online communities

“Trolling” and other negative behaviour on magazine websites is widespread, ranging from subtly provocative behaviour to outright abuse. Publishers have sought to develop lively online communities, with high levels of user-generated content. Methods of building sites have developed quickly, but methods of managing them have lagged behind. Some publishers have then felt overwhelmed by the size and behaviour of the communities they have created. This paper considers the reasons behind trolling and the tools digital editors have developed to manage their communities, taking up the role of Zygmunt Bauman's gardeners in what they sometimes refer to as “walled gardens” within the Internet's wild domains. Interviews were conducted with online editors at the front line of site management at Bauer, Giraffe, IPC, Natmags, RBI and the Times. This article shows how publishers are designing sites that encourage constructive posting, and taking a more active part in site management. Web 2.0 and the spread of broadband, which have made management of fast-growing communities difficult, may themselves bring positive change. As uploading material becomes technically easier, “ordinary” citizens can outnumber those who, lacking social skills or with little regard for social norms, originally made the Internet their natural habitat

Against the “networked information economy”: rethinking decentralization, community, and free software development

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One Year Later: September 11 and the Internet

Presents findings from a survey that looks at how the terror attacks affected Americans' views about access to online information, Internet use, and the Web after September 11. Contains scholarly studies built around analysis of hundreds of Web sites

The Blog - a new paradigm for exploiting the educational resources

By using blogs, the way towards a new learning environment within which the teacher and the student are connected, thus becoming more powerful, more motivated and reflective, is opened. In this way, the balance between individualized technologies and centralized ones is more stable. The use of web logs within an educational system will have a limited impact if the present dynamics of this communication system is ignored. In the light of these data, a possible resemblance with the implementation of institutionalized systems of study is underlined as an alternative form of the online studying environment.information society, Internet, blog, e-learning, e-business

Дизайн онлайн-делиберации: Выбор, критерии и эмпирические данные

Перевод статьи: Davies T., Chandler R. Online deliberation design: Choices, criteria, and evidence // Democracy in motion: Evaluating the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement / Nabatchi T., Weiksner M., Gastil J., Leighninger M. (eds.). -- Oxford: Oxford univ. press, 2013. -- P. 103-131. А. Кулик. Вниманию читателей предлагается обзор эмпирических исследований в области дизайна онлайн-форумов, предназначенных для вовлечения граждан в делиберацию. Размерности дизайна определены для различных характеристик делиберации: назначения, целевой аудитории, разобщенности участников в пространстве и во времени, среды коммуникации и организации делиберативного процесса. После краткого обзора критериев оценки вариантов дизайна рассматриваются эмпирические данные, соотносящиеся с каждым из вариантов. Эффективность онлайн-делиберации зависит от того, насколько условия коммуникации соотносятся с заданиями делиберации. Компромиссы, как, например, между анонимным или идентифицируемым участием, предполагают различные дизайны в зависимости от цели делиберации и состава участников. Выводы исследования получены на материале существующих технологий и могут измениться по мере коэволюции технологий и пользователей