While descriptions vary, a general definition of online communities by scholars Preece, Maloney-Krichmar and Abras (2003) posits they are groups of people who interact in virtual environments with some sort of purpose, following certain norms, and supported by technology. A similarly open and inclusive definition was given by Faraj, Jarvenpaa and Majchrzak in 2011, who defined online communities as
“Open collectives of dispersed individuals with members who are not necessarily known or identifiable and who share common interests, [and] attend to both their individuals and their collective welfare”
The idea that these communities look out for themselves and their members is worth noting, and the authors expand on it by saying that even though online communities are highly fluid, they are also continuous, so they can change their “boundaries, norms, participants, artifacts, interaction, and foci” over time, but remain essentially the same (Faraj, et al, 2011).
Components
Four main components make up online communities:
- People, who interact socially while satisfying their own needs or performing special roles.
- A shared purpose, which can be an interest, need, information exchange, or service.
- Policies, which can take the form of tacit assumptions, rituals, protocols, rules, and laws that guide people’s interactions.
- Computer systems, which support and mediate social interaction.
(Maloney-Krichmar & Preece, 2002)
Culture
If we focus on the third component, Policies, we can see that this also refers to culture, as it refers to things like tacit assumptions and rituals. Psychologist Edgar Schein, expert in organizational culture, defines culture as:
A pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems. (Schein, 2006)
The basic assumptions refer to deeply embedded behaviors and attitudes that constitute the essence of the culture. These are expressed further through values, which also serve as guides for behavior, and through artifacts, which are the visible elements of the culture – from inside jokes to hand signals and greetings. Therefore, culture is a key component of online communities. But how does culture form and spread in an online community, relying only on computer-mediated communication?
Sustainability in Online Communities: Resources and tensions
Ever wonder how online communities persist through time? Faraj et al. explain that as members attempt to manage the community’s resources, they engage in various ways that “potentially encourage collaboration, participation and sustainability” (Faraj, et al, 2011).
Community’s five resources
So what resources does an online community have?
- Passion: enthusiasm for the online community’s goals.
- Time, which community members spend on the community’s efforts.
- Socially ambiguous identities, because of the separation of members’ identifying information from their contributions.
- Social disembodiment of ideas, which is about the separation of ideas from their authors and their context.
- Temporary convergence – around a single goal, project, and so forth.
The idea is that each of these resources causes positive and negative consequences for the community, which means that there are always tensions that must be balanced for the community to exist and progress. As members do this, they engage and start forming bonds among each other.
Channeling participation
One of the things members tend to do as they manage community resources, is channel participation, which is about “identifying ways to keep interested participants informed of the current state of the online community’s collaborative efforts”. This is done so participants can take part and contribute in the community’s endeavors more easily. One way to do this is to use narratives.
Narratives
Narratives in this context are stories that explain how the online community has acted over time. They “represent a collective understanding of how individual behaviors interrelate over time.” Within an online community’s culture, their function is to create “a context for disembodiment of ideas, providing a temporary convergence, and allowing passionate and time-constrained participants to direct their efforts” (Faraj, et al, 2011).
In my research, I wanted to find out how strongly narratives actually played this role and whether or not they influenced member participation.
You can see more on narratives here»
Or, you can see my method and model.
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