Modeling Evolutionary Dynamics of Lurking in Social Networks

Lurking is a complex user-behavioral phenomenon that occurs in all large-scale online communities and social networks. It generally refers to the behavior characterizing users that benefit from the information produced by others in the community without actively contributing back to the production of social content. The amount and evolution of lurkers may strongly affect an online social environment, therefore understanding the lurking dynamics and identifying strategies to curb this trend are relevant problems. In this regard, we introduce the Lurker Game, i.e., a model for analyzing the transitions from a lurking to a non-lurking (i.e., active) user role, and vice versa, in terms of evolutionary game theory. We evaluate the proposed Lurker Game by arranging agents on complex networks and analyzing the system evolution, seeking relations between the network topology and the final equilibrium of the game. Results suggest that the Lurker Game is suitable to model the lurking dynamics, showing how the adoption of rewarding mechanisms combined with the modeling of hypothetical heterogeneity of users' interests may lead users in an online community towards a cooperative behavior.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. Accepted at CompleNet 201

Impact of Gamification on User’s Knowledge-Sharing Practices: Relationships between Work Motivation, Performance Expectancy and Work Engagement

How to engage and motivate employees to share their knowledge has become one of the main organizational strategic goals. This study, supported by the Flow theory and Kahn’s theory of engagement, investigated how the impact of gamification on user’s knowledge-sharing practices. We ran an online survey of 147 participants from a large organization that implemented social engagement and motivational systems to leverage internal knowledge-sharing practices. Our study revealed important drivers of job motivation (enjoyment, reciprocal benefit and recognition), which led to higher degree of job engagement and performance expectancy. From this study we derive important insights for practice and theory

Scaffolds: Experimenting with student­-driven digital badging in an iSchool context

Digital badge systems can be contentious to start and challenging to implement. In this project, we examine the development of an open, student-­led, peer-­to-­peer badging framework within an iSchool context. Scaffolds is a dynamic set of digital badges created to give students more concrete guidance in their exploration of the field of information science. The badges provide a way for students to customize their exploration of co­-curricular materials and activities to augment their educational experience. Using motivation and perception surveys, as well as in­-depth interviews with participants, the goal of this research is to understand what motivates students to participate in digital badges programs and how an open badging platform can be used to encourage student engagement in co-­curricular educational activities.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110790/2/walker_lee_lonn_scaffolds_iConference2015Submission.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110790/3/walker_lee_lonn_scaffolds_iConference2015Poster.pdfDescription of walker_lee_lonn_scaffolds_iConference2015Submission.pdf : Conference Paper SubmissionDescription of walker_lee_lonn_scaffolds_iConference2015Poster.pdf : Conference Poste

THE IMPACT OF GAMIFICATION ELEMENTS ON EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN THE SERVICE SECTOR IN BANGALORE.

A startup called Bunchball created a gamified system to increase consumer interaction in the early 2000s, gaining a great deal of attention in the process. This trend was adopted and applied in operational areas around the world. Over the years, gamification has been one of the most prominent developing methods that managers have used to boost employee engagement and performance. How to engage and inspire workers to grow and increase their performance in order to share their expertise has become one of the primary strategic objectives of the firm. This research, underpinned by the Flow theory and Kahn's theory of engagement, examined the effect of gamification on knowledge-sharing habits among users. We conducted an online poll with 150 participants from a major firm that introduced social engagement and performance platforms to facilitate internal knowledge exchange. Our research identified significant drivers of employment motivation (rewards-enjoyment, open-mindedness, and training), which resulted in a greater degree of job engagement and performance expectations. This research yields significant insights for practise and theory. &nbsp

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

Incentivizing High-quality Content from Heterogeneous Users: On the Existence of Nash Equilibrium

We study the existence of pure Nash equilibrium (PNE) for the mechanisms used in Internet services (e.g., online reviews and question-answer websites) to incentivize users to generate high-quality content. Most existing work assumes that users are homogeneous and have the same ability. However, real-world users are heterogeneous and their abilities can be very different from each other due to their diverse background, culture, and profession. In this work, we consider heterogeneous users with the following framework: (1) the users are heterogeneous and each of them has a private type indicating the best quality of the content she can generate; (2) there is a fixed amount of reward to allocate to the participated users. Under this framework, we study the existence of pure Nash equilibrium of several mechanisms composed by different allocation rules, action spaces, and information settings. We prove the existence of PNE for some mechanisms and the non-existence of PNE for some mechanisms. We also discuss how to find a PNE for those mechanisms with PNE either through a constructive way or a search algorithm