E-commerce strategists advise companies to create virtual communities for their customers. But what does this involve? Research on face-to-face communities identifies the concept of “sense of community: ” a characteristic of successful communities distinguished by members ’ helping behaviors and members’ emotional attachment to the community and other members. Does a sense of virtual community exist in online settings, and what does it consist of? Answering these questions is key, if we are to provide guidance to businesses attempting to create virtual communities. The paper explores the concept of sense of virtual community in a newsgroup we call Multiple Sports Newsgroup (MSN). We first demonstrate that MSN does indeed have a sense of virtual community, but that the dimensions of the sense of community in MSN differ somewhat from those reported for physical communities. The nature of these differences is plausibly related to the differences between electronic and face-to-face communication. We next describe the behavioral processes that contribute to the sense of virtual community at MSN—exchanging support, creating identities and making identifications, and the production of trust. Again, these processes are similar to those found in non-virtual communities, but they are related to the challenges of electronic communication. Lastly, we consider the question of how sense of community may come about and discuss the implications for electronic business.

Introduction Keegan [1] declares that `Without a medium of communication the concept "distance education" would not be an educational process...both synchronous and asynchronous media are viable means of communication for distance education providing that they allow two-way communication' (p. 118). Discussing quality and access in distance education from theoretical constructs, Garrison [2] states that the `concern for quality in distance education has identified an emerging paradigm based upon two-way communication as a necessary and central component of an educational transaction' (p. 17). In other words, interactive two-way communication is the critical component in distance education. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems have been used as media of communication rather than for their technological properties. Examining CMC systems requires examining an interactive communication model. Each communicative act has a source/sender who originates the me

E-commerce strategists advise companies to create virtual communities for their customers. But what is involved in establishing and maintaining virtual communities? This paper addresses two questions: Does a sense of community similar to that sometimes observed in physical communities also occur in virtual settings? And how is a sense of virtual community maintained? These questions are examined in an intensive study of an established virtual community called MSN. MSN members experienced a sense of community, but the dimensions of sense of community differed somewhat from those reported for physical communities in ways plausibly related to the differences between electronic and face-toface communication. The experienced sense of community in MSN was actively maintained through the social processes of exchanging support, creating identities and making identifications, and the production of trust. Again, these processes are similar to those in non-virtual communities, but related to the challenges of electronic communication. The findings suggest a process model of sense of virtual community creation and maintenance that is simpler and more powerful than previous theories.

Two collaborative forms of organizing dominate discussion of open participation and production on the Internet: a crowdsourcing model based on microparticipation from many, unconnected individuals, and a virtual community model, based on strong connections among a committed set of connected members. This paper argues that dimensions such as task interdependence, authority control, and group focus underpin behaviors associated with participation in such open systems, resulting in contributory behaviors that can be described at one end as ‘lightweight’, functioning by weak-tie attachment to a common purpose, enacted through authority-determined, rule-based contribution, and at the other end as ‘heavyweight’, operating through strong-tie affiliation with community members and community purpose, enacted through internallynegotiated, peer-reviewed contribution. Examination and articulation of these dimensions, and the resulting patterns of contributory behavior they engender, help reconcile peer production and virtual community approaches to online collaboration, explain motivational and structural aspects of new forms of collaborative production, and inform design for building and sustaining collective contributory systems. 1.

As a partial review of the field of communication and technology, this essay revisits

programmer named Jarkko Oikarinen created software for live, typed conversation among

`2channel ’ is the most popular, i.e., attracting enormous number of the Internet users, online-community site in Japan. However nobody knows the reasons of the popularity because most of the topics discussed in 2channel look like graffiti or meaningless descriptions. In this paper, we measure the characteristics of 2channel by 8 indices proposed here, and by which we reveal the dynamism. 1.

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Pre-publication version Please note that this file represents the original version of the paper which was accepted for publication by New Media and Society in 2005. A number of minor changes which were made before final publication are not included in this

Virtual communities, like all communities, require ongoing community maintenance activities. This paper presents an empirical study examining how a wiki repository was used to help overcome some of the community maintenance challenges common to help-based email list discussions. Specifically, we found that inclusion of off-topic but related content on the wiki enabled list members to keep the discussion on-topic while still addressing the needs of members. Offloading of repetitive and potentially contentious “holy war ” debates to the wiki encouraged list members to summarize their arguments into a meaningful information product. The community’s use of the wiki in helping answer frequently asked questions helped attract new members and helped them gain the knowledge they needed to comfortably contribute to the email list. It also helped active participants answer questions more efficiently and effectively by supporting the reuse of information. Finally, the wiki supported peripheral participation by new and former members. This study demonstrates that the architecture of information collections and information flows in an online community has a significant impact on the social processes related to community maintenance.