January 5 - Intro/Metaphors
This session will provide an overview of the course and explore the metaphors of "community", "network", and "great good place".
Required Readings
Additional Readings
- Galston1999: Galston, W. A. (1999). Does the Internet Strengthen Community?, [available online∞]. Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy.
- Rheingold1998: Rheingold, Howard. Virtual Communities. Chapter 11 in The Community of the Future, edited by Hesselbeing, Goldsmith, Beckhard, and Schubert. 1998. pps. 115-122.
- Hafner1997: Hafner, Katie. The Epic Saga of The Well: The World�s Most Influential Online Community (And It�s Not AOL). Wired 5.05 May 1997. [available online∞]
- Sproull2003: Sproull, Lee. Online Communities. Draft prepared for The Internet Encyclopedia, edited by Hossein Bidgoli, to be published by John Wiley and sons.
January 12 - Purposes and Audiences
This session will examine the variety of purposes that a community may fulfill, from the perspective of various stakeholders. In class, we will talk about the communities you have chosen, or are considering. We will also get a tutorial on how to use the Wiki and conduct initial sign-ups for "discussion leader" roles for the remaining readings.
Required Readings
Required Exploration
Look around for an on-line community that you think might be interesting enough to spend the semester observing and analyzing. By Tuesday at 6PM (Phase III), send an email to the class list saying which one you're thinking of studying.
Additional Readings and links that might give you ideas
Learning
- Schank2002: Schank, P., Harris, A., & Schlager, M.S. (2002). Painting a Landscape onto TAPPED IN 2. Presented to the "The Role of Place in Shaping Virtual Community" workshop at the CSCW Conference, New Orleans, LA, November 16-20, 2002. [available here∞]
Work
- Finholt2002: Finholt, Thomas A. Collaboratories. Chapter submitted for the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, B. Cronin, ed. [available through course reserves∞]
- Raymond1998: Raymond, Eric. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. First Monday, 3(3) [available online∞]
Games
Political and other Deliberation
- Price2001: Price, Vincent and Joseph N. Cappella. Online Deliberation and its Influence: The Electronic Dialogue Project in Campaign 2000. Paper presented to the annual meetings of the American Association of Public Opinion Research, Montreal, CA, May 2001. [available through course reserves∞]
- See also http://www.e-thepeople.org/∞, and http://slashdot.org/∞
Commerce
- Gibson1999: Gibson, William. My Obsession. Wired 7.01 January 1999. [available online∞]
Social Support
- Cummings2002: Cummings, J., L. Sproull, and S. Kiesler, Beyond Hearing: Where real world and online support meet. Group Dynamics, 2002. 6: p. 78-88. [available through course reserves∞]
Political Action and Social Movements
Networking
Neighboring
- Hampton2000: Hampton, K. and B. Wellman, Examining Community in the Digital Neighbourhood: Early Results from Canada's Wired Suburb, in Digital Cities: Technologies, Experiences, and Future Perspectives, T. Ishida and K. Isbister, Editors. 2000, Springer-Verlag: Berlin. p. 475-492. [available online∞]
Hobbies
Socializing and Dating
- Final paper∞ from a previous year's students: Nathan Parham and Walter Mosley
Some sites to explore if you don't have any good ideas yet (students: "feel free to add others")
friendster, livejournal, meetup, wikipedia, freecycle
Jan. 19 - Ethics of studying eCommunities
This session will examine distinctions between public and private communication, issues of informed consent, and other responsibilities of ethical investigators. We will also discuss procedures for external review of research plans, through the IRB, for those of you intending to develop "generalized knowledge" based on your investigation (e.g., if you hope to publish something based on what you do in this course). Students in 884 will also have an overview of various research methods that have been applied to online communities and discuss active research questions in the area using sections of
Preece2003 as a springboard.
Required Readings (684 and 884)
- EysenbachTill 2001 (AlliWalk): Eysenbach, G. and Till, J. E. (2001) �Ethical issues in qualitative research on internet communities.� BMJ, 323, 1103-1105. [available online∞]
- Kraut2003 (FrankLester): Kraut, R. E., Olson, J., Manaji, M., Bruckman, A., Cohen, J. & Couper, M. (Under review). Psychological research online: Opportunities and challenges. Report prepared for the American Psychology Association's Taskforce on the Internet and Psychological Research. [available here∞]
- HumanSubjectsProcedures for this semester.
884 Required Reading
- Preece2003 (LaurieBuis): Preece, J. and Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2003) �Online Communities.� In J. Jacko and A. Sears, A. (Eds.) Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Publishers. Mahwah: NJ. 596-620. [Only sections Section 5 and 6 are required (pages 40-48). A draft version of entire article is available here∞]
Required Technology Project
[Note: I still encourage you to set up a public weblog if you haven't done so, using one of these services. But I am workign to set up our own blogging space that will be password protected. Stay tuned.]
If you don't already have one, set up a personal blog for yourself using one of the available free services, such as
http://www.blogger.com∞,
http://www.livejournal.com∞, or
http://www.typepad.com∞ or
http://www.bloglines.com∞. You can set up your blog anywhere you like, as long as there is an RSS feed for it. You are responsible for figuring out what that is and finding the URLs for the human-readable web access to your blog and for the machine-readable RSS feed for your blog. After you post your first blog entry, post the two URLs to
ClassBlogs.
Optional Technology Project
Set up an RSS aggregator of some kind (perhaps even using this wiki site) and enter the URLs for the RSS feeds of all your classmates, so that you can see all their Phase III posts for the rest of the semester in one place. If you don't do this, and you want to follow what one your classmates have posted in their blogs, you'll have to visit the web sites for their blogs individually.
Additional Readings
- Bassett2002: Bassett, E.H. and K. O'Riordan, Ethics of Internet Research: Contesting the Human Subjects Research Model. 2002. [available online∞]
- Walther2002: Walther, J.B., Research Ethics in Internet-Enabled Research: Human Subjects Issues and Methodological Myopia. 2002. [available through course reserves∞]
- Bruckman2002: Bruckman, A., Studying the Amateur Artist: A Perspective on Disguising Data Collected in Human Subjects Research on the Internet. 2002. [available online∞]
- Frankel1999: Frankel, M.S. and S. Siang, Ethical and Legal Aspects of Human Subjects Research on the Internet: A Report of a Workshop. 1999, American Association for the Advancement of Science. [available online∞]
January 26 - Activities and Roles (884: Science of Design)
This week will explore the structure of activity in e-communities: the places where it occurs, its time structuring through events, and how repeated activities can be invested with meaning through rituals. We will also examine the roles that participants play in online communities. Who are the leaders and who are the followers? What function does a moderator serve? What are the different roles of old-timers and newcomers? What are the trajectories by which people move into different roles?
In 884, we will focus on the unrelated topic of theories and the science of design.
Ethics Procedures
This week, in addition to the usual requirements, you should post in your blog a plan for how you will observe, interact with, and report ethically for your project this semester. You should also comment on the plan posted by at least two other students.
If you're not sure what your plan might look like, take a look at the
procedures∞that we used two years, when we were under a different IRB regime. Your plan might look quite a bit like the "note to the IRB" that students were required to write for the class two years ago. But you have a little more leeway this year as to the format, so long as you address the ethical principles appropriately.
Required Technology Exploration
684 Required Readings
884 Required Readings
- Simon1996 (JudeYew): Simon, H. (1996) Chapters 5 (SimonChapter5), and 6 (SimonChapter6) in The Sciences of the Artificial � Third Edition. The MIT Press. [available here∞]
- Carroll1997 (LaurieBuis): Carroll, J. M. (1997) Human-computer interaction: psychology as a science of design. Int. J. Human-Computer Studies. 46, 501-522. [available here∞]
- Chen2003:(CaRichardson) Chen, Y., Kiesler, S., Konstan, J., Kraut, R., Resnick, P., Reidl, J., & Terveen, L. (2003). Designing on-line communities to enhance participation -- bridging theory and practice. A proposal to the National Science Foundation. (focus on the link between research and design and on the field experiment methodology) [available here∞]
884 Additional Readings
- SimonChapter1: Simon, H. (1996) Chapter 1 in The Sciences of the Artificial � Third Edition. The MIT Press.
- Furnas2001: Furnas, George W., Design in the MoRAS, Chapter 3 in Human Computer Interaction in the New Millennium, John C. Carroll (Ed.), Addison-Wesley. 2001. pp 53-73.
- Ackerman2000: Ackerman, M.S. (2000) The intellectual challenge of CSCW: The gap between social requirements and technical feasibility. Human-Computer Interaction, 15, 179-203.
Februrary 2 - Intro to Communities of Practice: Negotiation of Meaning
Beginning with this session, we will examine one theoretical perspective on community, the lens of communities of practice.
WengerChapter1 describes practices, what a community does, in terms of three basic concepts: negotiation of meaning, participation, and reification.
WengerChapter2 describes practices as the thing that binds a community together. The communal glue of practice has three dimensions: mutual engagement, a joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire of ways of doing things. While the community of practice theoretical lens is not the only one we�ll employ this semester, it is an important that we�ll build on.
[Note: This book is hard to understand (at least it was for me the first two times I read it :-). But I think it�s worth it. You�ll need to allocate a lot of time to it, over several sittings and, ideally, informal discussions with your classmates. If you haven�t done so already, I recommend that you read Paul Edwards� advice on
how to read a book∞, and follow it, especially for readings from this book.]
Required Technology Exploration
Required Readings
Additional Readings
- Wenger Introduction (pp. 1-17). This may be of interest to students with a background in sociology, anthropology, or education. If that�s not you, I think you�ll find that this section is not the best way to get started on reading the book. (Ph.D. students are strongly encouraged to read this section, but I suggest that you wait until after reading the book rather than starting with it.)
February 9 - Communities of Practice, Communities and Learning
Required Technology Exploration
Required Readings
February 16 - Governance, Conflict Management, and Reputations
Required Technology Exploration
Required Readings (684 and 884)
- SmithChapter6 (YongKim): Smith, Anna Duval. Problems of Conflict Management in Virtual Communities. Chapter 6 in Smith and Kollock
- Lampe2004 (SooyeonHwang): Lampe, Cliff and Paul Resnick. Slash(dot) and Burn: Distributed Moderation in a Large Online Conversation Space. In Proceedings of ACM CHI 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vienna Austria. 2004. [available online∞]
Required Readings (684)
Required Readings (884)
- Friedman2001 (AycaObekci): Friedman, E. and Resnick, P. (2001). The Social Cost of Cheap Pseudonyms. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 10(2): 173-199. [available through course reserves∞]
- Dellarocas2004:(CaRichardson) Dellarocas, C., Sanctioning Reputation Mechanisms in Online Trading Environments with Moral Hazard (July 2004). MIT Sloan Working Paper No. 4297-03. [available online∞]
Additional Readings
- Herring2002: Herring, Susan, Job-Sluer, Kirk, Scheckler, Riebecca, and Barab, Sasha (2002). Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum. The Information Society. Volume 18, Number 5. 371-384.
- Frauenfelder, Mark. Revenge of the Know-It-Alls: Inside the Web's free-advice revolution. Wired 8.07, July 2000.
- Resnick2000: Resnick, Paul, Zeckhauser, Richard, Friedman, Eric, and Kuwabara, Ko. Reputation Systems. Communications of the ACM, 43(12), December 2000, pages 45-48.
- SmithChapter5: Reid, Elizabeth. Hierarchy and Power: Social Control in Cyberspace. Chapter 5 in Smith and Kollock
Februrary 23 - Network Effects and Community Trajectories
Required Technology Exploration
Required Readings (684 and 884)
684 Required Readings
884 Required Readings
- Katz1994 (ErikWJ) : Katz, M.L., & Shapiro, C. (1994) Systems competition and network effects. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(2), pp. 93-115. [available through course reserves∞]
- Markus1987 (LaurieBuis): Markus, L. (1987) Towards a �critical mass� theory of interactive media: Universal access, independence, and diffusion. Communication Research, 14, pp. 491-511. [Available through course reserves∞]
- Schoberth2003 (KathyLee): Schoberth, T., Preece, J., Heinzl, A. (2003) Online Communities: A Longitudinal Analysis of Communication Activities. Proceedings of the Thirty-sixth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE Press: Washington, D.C. [available online∞]
Additional Readings
- Putnam2003: Putnam, Robert, and Feldstein, Lewis, Saddleback Church: From Crowd to Congregation, Chapter 6 in Better Together: Restoring the American Community. 2003, Simon & Schuster.
- Katz1985: Katz, M.L. and Shapiro, C. (1985). Network Externalities, Competition, and Compatibility. American Economic Review. 75(3): 424-440.
- Liebowitz1994: Liebowitz, S.J. and Margolis, S.E. (1994). Network Externality: An Uncommon Tragedy. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 8(2): 133-150.
- Asvanund2004: Asvanund, A., Clay, K., Krishnan, R., Smith, M. D., (2004). An Empirical Analysis of Network Externalities in Peer-To-Peer Music-Sharing Networks. March 2004 Draft Version. [available online∞]
- Jones2002: Jones, Q., Ravid, G., and Rafaeli, S. (2002) An empirical exploration of mass interaction system dynamics: Individual information overload and Usenet discourse. Paper presented at the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
March 2 - No class, winter break
March 9 - Relationships and Friendship
Required Technology Exploration
Required Readings (684 and 884)
- Walther2002 (SooyeonHwang): Walther, J. B., & Parks, M. R. (2002). Cues filtered out, cues filtered in: Computer-mediated communication and relationships. In I. M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (3rd ed., pp. 529-563). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [available here∞]
- Cummings2002: Cummings, J., Butler, B., & Kraut, R. (2002). The quality of online social relationships. Communications of the ACM, 45(7), 103-108. [available through course reserves∞]
- McKenna2002 (LindaYu): McKenna, K. Y. A., Green, A. S., & Gleason, M. E. J. (2002). Relationship formation on the Internet: What's the big attraction? Journal of Social Issues, 58(1), 9-31. [available through course reserves∞]
Required Readings (684)
Required Readings (884)
- Berscheid1998 (KathyLee): Berscheid, E., & Reis, H. T. (1998). Attraction and close relationships. In D. T. Gilbert & S. T. Fiske & et al. (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology, Vol 2 (4th ed., pp. 193-281). New York, NY, US: McGraw-Hill. Pages 192-210, 222-226, 230-248. [available through course reserves∞]
March 16 - Identities, part I
This week and April 6 will examine who people are when they interact in on-line communities, as inherited from socially constructed groupings. One perspective (Wenger) defines a person by the groups in which they are able to act appropriately. Other authors (Burkhalter, Minow) stress that group identities depend in part on our self-identification but also on whether others, both group members and non-members, claim us as members of those groups. Sassenberg explores the connection between discussion topic and collective identity.
Required Technology Exploration
Required Readings (684 and 884)
- SmithChapter3 (AycaObekci): Burkhalter, B. (1998) Reading race online: Discovering racial identity in Usenet discussions. In Communities in Cyberspace by Marc Smith and Peter Kollock.
- Sassenberg2002 (NoorAliHasan): Sassenberg, K. (2002). Common bond and common identity groups on the Internet: Attachment and normative behavior in on-topic and off-topic chats. Group Dynamics, 6(1), 27-37. [available through course reserves∞]
- Ackerman1996 (YongKim): Ackerman, M.S., and Palen, L. (1996) The zephyr help instance: Promoting ongoing activity in a cscw system. CHI 96 Conference Proceedings, 268-275. [available here∞]
Required Readings (884)
- Hogg2001 (JudeYew): Hogg, M. A. (2001). Social categorization, depersonalization, and group behavior. In M. Hogg. & T. S. Tinsdale. Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Group Processes (pp 57-85). Malden, MA: Blackwell. [Available through course reserves∞]
Additional Readings
- Resnick2005: Resnick, P. Position paper on designing to support common bond and common identity groups.
- Preece2004: Preece, J., Nonnecke, B., Andrews, D. (2004) The top five reasons for lurking: improving community experiences for everyone. Computers in Human Behavior, 20: 201�223.
- SmithChapter2: Donath, J. (1998) Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. In Communities in Cyberspace by Marc Smith and Peter Kollock.
- Minow1997: Minow, Martha. Not only for Myself: Identity, Politics and the Law. Pp. 9-58.
- Moreland2001: Moreland, R.L. and Levine, J.M. (2001). Socialization in organizations and work groups. In M.E. Turner (Ed.), Groups at work: Theory and research (pp. 69-112). Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- OReilly1989: O'Reilly, C. (1989) Corporations, culture, and commitment: Motivation and social control in organizations. California Management Review, 4, 9-25.
- Deaux1995: Deaux, K. (1995). Social identification. In ET Higgins & AW Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 777-798).
- Tajfel1971: Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1(2), 149-178.
- Spears2002: Spears, R., Postmes, T., Lea, M., & Wolbert, A. (2002). When are net effects gross products. Journal of Social Issues, 58(1), 91-107.
- Postmes2002: Postmes, T., & Brunsting, S. (2002). Collective action in the age of the Internet: Mass communication and online mobilization. Social Science Computer Review, 20(3), 290-301.
March 23 - Public Goods and Common Pool Resources
[NOTE CHANGE FROM ORIGINAL DATE FOR THIS SESSION. Howard Rheingold is visiting SI on this day and will be giving a talk related to these topics, so I thought I'd move it up.]
Required Technology Exploration
Required Readings (684 and 884)
- Kollock1996 (AndrewBabson): Kollock, Peter., & Smith, Marc. Managing the Virtual Commons. In Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Susan Herring. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1996. pp. 109-128. [available online∞]
- Sproull2004: Sproull, L., Conley, C., & Moon, J. Y. (in press) (YongKim). Pro-social behavior on the net. In Y. Amichai-Hamburger (Ed.), The social net: The social psychology of the Internet. New York: Oxford University Press. [prepublication version available through course reserves∞]
Required Readings (884)
- Ledyard1995 (ErikWJ): Ledyard, J. (1995). Public goods: A survey of experimental research. In J. H. Kagel & A. Roth (Eds.), The handbook of experimental economics (pp. 1-53 only - through section 3.3). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [available through course reserves∞]
Additional Readings
- SmithChapter9: Kollock, Peter., The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace, in Communities in Cyberspace.
- Beenen2004 : Beenen, G., Ling, K., Wang, X., Chang, K., Frankowski, D., Resnick, P., and Kraut, R.E.. Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities. Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2004 Conference on CSCW, Chicago, IL. 2004. [available here∞]
- Ostrom, Elinor. Managing the Commons.
- Ostrom2000: Ostrom, Elinor (2000). Collective action and the evolution of social norms. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(3), 137-158. [available through course reserves∞]
- Karau1993: Karau, S. & Williams, K. (1993) Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 681-706. [available through course reserves∞]
- Hardin1968: Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243-1248.
- Constant1996: Constant, D., Kiesler, S., and Sproull, L. (1996). The Kindness of Strangers: The usefulness of electronic weak ties for technical advice. Organization Science, Vol. 7, No. 2 (March � April, 1996), 119-135. [available through course reserves∞]
- Lakhani2003: Lakhani., K. R., & Hippel, E. v. (2003) How open source software works "free" user-to-user assistance. Research Policy, 32, 923-943. [available through course reserves∞]
- Constant1994: Constant, D., Kiesler, S., and Sproull, L. (1994). What�s mine is ours, or is it? A study of attitudes about information sharing. Information Systems Research, 5: 400-421.
- Wasko2000: Wasko, M. M. and Faraj, S. (2000). "It is What One Does": why people participate and help others in electronic communities of practice. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 9, 155-173. [Available through course reserves∞]
March 30 - Inter-group relations
Required Technology Exploration
CVS [
ConcurrentVersionSystem] (
BenjaminChiao)
Required Readings
Additional Readings
- VanAlstyne?: Van Alstyne, M. and Brynjolfsson, E. Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyberbalkanization?
- Horrigan2004: Horrigan, Garrett and Resnick. The Internet and Democratic Debate, Oct 2004. [available here∞]
April 6 - Identities and Learning in Communities of Practice
Required Technology Exploration
[To be determine - feel free to make any suggestions here]
Required Readings
Additional Readings
884 Students must post their DesignAssignment position paper to the wiki today. Please post it to your personal WikiName page (e.g., DerekHansen) and include a link to your page below:
884 DesignAssignment
<insert name here once you've completed posting the
DesignAssignment>
BenjaminChiao "A Comprehensive and Universally Accessible Reputation System for Open Source Contributors"∞. I have developed an open source reputation website prototype. Please access
"here"∞.
LaurieBuis:
"Evaluation of the Success and Failure of Nonverbal Cues on Weightwatchers.com"∞
AycaObekci's
design assignment∞
XiaouZhou: Evaluation of UThink -- Existing Design Feature Explanation
JudeYew: Factors affecting levels of participation in a class learning community
ErikWJ:
EriksDesignAssignment - SIEVE
AndrewBabson: Discogs: Design Successes
YongKim: Feedback System @ Elance
CaRichardson: Design Assignment
Building a bridge between doctors and patients∞
KathyLee: design proposal for del.icio.us
April 13 - Discussion of Design Projects
Required Readings
April 20 - Classes are over, so no class meeting today. Final papers due for 684 students. Research Proposal due for 884 students.