Course 8: Evidenced-Based Social Design of Online Communities -
CourseContribution & Benefit: To become successful, online communities must meet challenges, including starting up and encouraging contributions. This tutorial reviews social science theory and research on these topics and translates it into design recommendations.
Abstract » Online communities are among the fastest growing sections of the Internet and provide members with information, companionship, social support and entertainment. Although as a class these online communities are very successful, the success of particular ones varies widely and many fail.
To become or remain successful, online communities must meet a number of challenges that are common to offline as well as online groups and organizations. For example, online communities must handle the start-up challenge: early in their lifecycle they have few members to generate content and little content to attract members. Throughout their lifecycle, they must recruit and socialize newcomers, encourage commitment and contribution from members, solve problems of coordination and encourage appropriate behavior among members and interlopers alike. This tutorial is organized around two of these design challenges – starting a community and getting members to contribute to it.
The social sciences can tell us a lot about how to make thriving online communities. Economics and various branches of psychology offer theories of individual motivation and of human behavior in social situations. Properly interpreted, they can inform choices about how to get a community started and motivate contributions.
After taking this tutorial, students will appreciate the value of using social science research as the basis for social design. They will have had an introduction to the social science literature relevant to problems of encouraging contributions in online communities and starting a community from scratch. Through exercises, they will appreciate how to translate theory and evidence into designs. They will have pointers to where to learn more.
The tutorial is based on the presenters’ new book, Kraut & Resnick (2012). Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Participants will receive prints of relevant book chapters.