Community and Social Media Use among Early PEV Drivers

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) are now being offered for sale to consumers. Contemporaneously, multi-way social interactions among individuals, groups, businesses, governments, and other actors are increasingly facilitated by communication technologies: we take this to be “social media.” Can this confluence facilitate the formation of new interest-based communities among plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) buyers? How might this be important to promoting PEVs? This paper presents the results of 28 in-depth interviews with household PEV drivers in San Diego, California. These PEV drivers show wide variation in their descriptions of who they believe PEV drivers to be, conceptualizations of a PEV, uses of social media to engage other members of the community, and socially mediated and face-to-face interactions with other PEV drivers. Better understanding of the relationship between emerging PEV markets, social media and consumer-based communities will affect the ongoing management of transitions to electric-mobility

Investigating and Supporting Sensemaking within Online Health Communities

This dissertation focuses on understanding and supporting individual and collective sensemaking within online health communities (OHCs). This major goal was achieved in three aims. In Aim 1, this dissertation contributes a rich descriptive account of collective sensemaking in OHCs forums by describing how it occurs and develops, what triggers it, what elements constitute collective construction of meaning, and what conversational moves positively contribute to this process. Further, it describes how collective sensemaking in OHCs is impacted by the interplay between informational and socio-emotional needs of OHCs members. Moreover, it examines how design of different social computing platforms influences OHCs members’ ability to meet their informational and socio-emotional needs and engage in collective sensemaking. In Aim 2, this dissertation explores the design space of tools for supporting individual sensemaking through optimized information access. Through the design and evaluation of a prototype DisVis it examines the impact of such tools on OHCs members’ ability to understand information within discussion threads. In the final Aim 3, this dissertation proposes a novel approach for meeting the three main needs identified in Aims 1 and 2: promoting individual sensemaking, while at the same time encouraging collective sensemaking, and facilitating development of social awareness and ties among community members. The design and evaluation of the novel solution for visualizing discussion threads that synergistically addresses these three needs—dSense—provides insights for future research and design of interactive solutions for supporting individual and collective sensemaking within OHCs

Power and politics in research design and practice: Opening up space for social equity in interdisciplinary, multi-jurisdictional and community-based research

Working collaboratively with communities is commonly considered a cornerstone of good practice in research involving social-ecological concerns. Increasingly, funding agencies also recognise that such collaborations are most productive when community partners have some influence on the design and implementation of the projects that benefit from their participation. However, researchers engaged with this work often struggle to actively engage community members in this way and, in particular, Indigenous peoples. In this article, we argue that useful strategies for facilitating such engagement are to leave space in the research plan for questions of interest to community partners and to encourage equitable interactions between all participants through the use of forums in which power dynamics are intentionally flattened. We demonstrate the use of this technique in an interdisciplinary, multi-jurisdictional research study involving the fate and transport of toxic compounds that lead to fish consumption advisories throughout the world. In this project, the use of participatory forums resulted in community partners in Michigan’s Keweenaw Bay area of Lake Superior shaping a key aspect of the research by raising the simple but significant question: ‘When can we eat the fish?’. Their interest in this question also helped to ensure that they would remain meaningful partners throughout the duration of the project. The conclusion emphasises that further integration of Indigenous and community-based research methods has the potential to significantly enhance the process and value of university-community research engagement in the future

The Measure of Meetings: Forums, Deliberation, and Cultural Policy

This research seeks to answer the question: “Do meetings matter for advancing cultural policy?” The question is approached theoretically and comparatively by examining the broader literature on policy making, as well specific case studies of meetings in other fields, in order to draw lessons and implications for arts and culture; discursively and ethnographically, by attending the annual meetings of arts service associations and recording and interpreting how people at these meetings talked about problems and policy; and empirically, by looking at a sample of conference program books over ten years and coding and analyzing what issues were discussed and who was invited to discuss them. We also studied, in detail, what a random sample of 40 participants say they learned at a particular annual convention and what policy-relevant actions they took as a result of having attended the meeting. Overall, we find that meetings are not currently effective tools for advancing policy in the cultural sector, with some notable exceptions. In arts and culture, where resources are modest, where the policy community is fragmented, where problems are poorly defined, where there is no central authority or government agency, and where issues have low salience for the general public, welltimed and carefully orchestrated meetings can perhaps play an even more important role than they do in other fields.

Practice As Pedagogy: Learning Through Participation In The Caribexams Online Community Of Practice

The purpose of this study was to develop community redesign strategies to support community members\u27 participation in the CaribExams online Community of Practice and to investigate the impact of these strategies on members\u27 participation levels and trajectories. CaribExams online community was developed to assist out-of-school learners who were preparing to sit for the Caribbean Examinations Council\u27s regional English exam. The redesign project was developed to address an ongoing problem of low participation by members in the online community. A second purpose of the study was to investigate and empirically validate theoretically grounded design principles based on social practice learning theory advanced by Lave and Wenger (1991). Using a theory-grounded design method the critical attributes of the Community of Practice concept were extracted from the social practice learning theory framework. Generalized design principles were developed based on concept attributes and these were contextualized into redesign strategies for the CaribExams online community redesign project. The redesign strategies were implemented over a four week period. 20 CaribExams community members agreed to participate in the study. The design and development study used a mixed method research design and collected data using semi-structured interviews, website data logs and participant observation. Results revealed that although members\u27 participation in the CaribExams online community improved as a result of the redesign strategies, these changes were not significant nor maintained long enough to represent a sustained trajectory toward full participation. Members\u27 participation levels were only minimally affected by the implementation of the redesign strategies

Talking together : consumer communities in healthcare

Consumer involvement in computer mediated communities (CMCs) is increasing particularly in high involvement services such as healthcare. This paper examines the role of CMCs as providers of patient information and support and the subsequent effect on the relationship between 'informed' consumers and health care providers. The evolving dialogue between consumers in virtual communities provides one key axis along which professional service consumption will evolve. The challenge for service consumers is to develop frameworks that facilitate robust dialogue and exchange of information and emotional support to complement their rising authority. The parallel challenge is for the established medical profession to recognise the consequences of this evolving dialogue and develop approaches to service delivery that effectively engage with consumers on the basis of this increasing authority

Discussion Analytics: Identifying Conversations and Social Learners in FutureLearn MOOCs

Discussion among learners in MOOCs has been hailed as beneficial for social constructive learning. To understand the pedagogical value of MOOC discussion forums, several researchers have utilized content analysis techniques to associate individual postings with differing levels of cognitive activity. However, this analysis typically ignores the turn taking among discussion postings, such as learners responding to others’ replies to their posts, learners receiving no reply for their posts, or learners just posting without conversing with others. This information is particularly important in understanding patterns of conversations that occur in MOOCs, and learners’ commenting behaviors. Therefore, in this paper we categorize comments in a FutureLearn MOOC based on their nature (post vs. reply to others’ post), classify learners based on their contributions for each type of post-ing, and identify conversations based on the types of comments composing them. This categorization quantifies the dynamics of conversations in the discussion activities, allowing monitoring of on-going discussion activities in FutureLearn and further analysis of identified conversations, social learners, and course steps with an unusually high number of a particular type of comment