the debate over the contribution of the internet to democracy is farfrom settled. some point to the empowering effects of online discussionand fund raising on recent electoral campaigns in the us to argue thatthe internet will restore the public sphere. others claim that the internetis just a virtual mall, a final extension of global capitalism into everycorner of our lives. this paper argues f...

The debate over the contribution of the Internet to democracy is farfrom settled. Some point to the empowering effects of online discussionand fund raising on recent electoral campaigns in the US to argue thatthe Internet will restore the public sphere. Others claim that the Internetis just a virtual mall, a final extension of global capitalism into everycorner of our lives. This paper argues f...

It is increasingly common for online communities to rely on members rather than editors to contribute and moderate content. To motivate members to perform these tasks, some sites display social comparisons, information designed to show members how they compare to others in the system. For example, Amazon, an online book store, shows a list of top reviewers. In this study, we investigate the eff...

Abundance of user contributions does not necessarily indicate sustainability of an online community. On the contrary, excessive contributions in the systems may result in information overload and user withdrawal. We propose a userand communityadaptive reward mechanism aiming to regulate the quantity of the contributions and encourage users to moderate the quality of contributions themselves. Th...

Online learning communities could be seen as tools or resources that enable people to perform actions together online. One could conceptualise the multiplicity of resources both within and outwith the online community as the set of circumstances that support learning. These circumstances might more commonly be referred to as the learning (or the learner’s) context. But what do we understand abo...

While online communities of various nature proliferate in cyberspace, our understanding of the reasons underlying their success or failure is still at the initial stage. The present study contributes to this area through examining an abortive attempt to build an online learning community of part-time postgraduate students. The objective is to identify design considerations and strategies for ex...

In this paper I outline the characteristics of built environments that are believed to be effective in supporting social activity in physical space. I then discuss the degree to which these features can be translated into digital space. I argue that, although we can learn much from studying place-based communities, simply replicating the appearance of participants, architectural backdrops, and ...

We have been experiencing an explosion in the market of social websites that aim not only to entertain us, but also to help us enlarge our professional networks, to redefine business models and capture new customers, to modify the way learning and teaching are performed, among others. So far, little research has been done on what drives individuals to contribute to online communities, as there ...

Communities offer a context for people to meet, communicate and collaborate. Tools to support communities usually provide a communication and coordination medium and functionalities to find communication partners. Thereby, they strengthen existing communities or enable completely new (virtual) communities. In this paper we briefly present some ideas towards the extension of community support to...