Virtual Communities in Cyberspace

1
ATHENS UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
TECHNOLOGY
Virtual Communities in Cyberspace
Anthony Papargyris (apaparg_at_aueb.gr)
21 03 - 2005
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Outline of my presentation

• Virtuality and Cyberspace
• Virtual Communities
• Tools Technologies for Virtual Communities
• Brand Communities

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About Me

• PhD candidate
• Research interests in Virtuality, Games and
  Learning Communities, Communities of Practice,
  Knowledge Management Organizational Learning
• I work as a researcher at the ELTRUN/OIS
  Organisational Information Systems Center
  http//www.eltrun.gr/content/groups/g_ois-details
  .html

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What is virtual?

• A synthetic reality Cyberspace describes the
  symbiotic relationship between man and computer
  networks (Gibson 1984)
• An interface the 3 Is Interactivity,
  Immersion, Information Intensity (Heim 1993)
• A place out of here Cyberspace is not a
  representation of the real world but rather a
  reconstruction of it. An ontological shift (Heim
  1993)
• A mode of being Real, Actual, Virtual,
  Possible (Lévy 1998)

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Virtual Communities
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Virtual Communities (II)
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Virtual Communities can take many different forms
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Virtual Communities can take many different forms
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Virtual Communities of Practice
Learning as participation in social interaction
and negotiation of meaning in collective action
(Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998, Brown and
Duguid 1991).

• Membership,
• Participation,
• Roles and identities,
• Situateness,
• Negotiation of meaning,
• Reification,
• Learning curriculum,
• Economies of Meaning and New Identities

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Current research on Virtual Communities

• Technologies used (CSCW, Groupware) (Grudin 1994,
  Sproull and Patterson 2004)
• Motivation to share not share information (free
  riders) (Wellman and Gulia 1999)
• Cultural and linguistic diversity (Gidrovich and
  Syroezhin 1981)
• Anonymity and Trust (Abdul-Rahman and Syroezhin
  1981)
• Member-defined economies (Kollock 1999
  Castranova 1998)
• Politics and Laws (Hegel and Armstrong 1997
  Castells 2000)
• Innovation and personalised services (Brown 1998
  von Hippel 2001 Nambisan 2002)
• Pedagogy and Learning on-line (Stephenson 2001
  Wachter et al. 2000)

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Why do people offer their time and resources?

• Some people are altruists
• Some would help their friends and hope to make
  new friends through helping
• Some seek glory (high status) and reputation
• Some seek high marks or money

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Tools Technologies for Virtual Communities

• Asynchronous
• e-mail
• Threaded Discussion Systems (FORUM, Bulletin
  Boards)
• Synchronous
• Video/Voice/Chat Conferencing
• Shared whiteboard/applications
• 2D/3D Avatar Virtual Environments
• Computer Mediated Collaboration Systems
• Combination of all and more of the above
• Group Decision Support Systems

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Tools Technologies for Virtual Communities (II)
Such tools help to build an (virtual) environment
of structured informality.

• Electronic Forums
• Facilitate one-to-many asynchronous debate
• Create a thematized communitys memory

• Chat rooms
• Facilitate one-to-many and one-to-one
  synchronous debate (dialogue)
• Can be used for file sharing
• An excellent medium for broadcasting information
  and receiving immediate feedback

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3D Avatar Virtual Environments

• Active Worlds
• There.com
• The Sims Online
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games
  (MMORPGs)

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"Is there a there in cyberspace?"(Barlow 1995)
"There's no there there, but I'm
there"(FineekFoo, MOOer, 1996)
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Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

• Various types of communities in MMORPGs
• Around the game Communities of gamers
• For the game Communities of game developers
  (Game Masters)
• Inside the game Communities of players (guilds)

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Brand Communities
where conversations are more important than
transactions and consumers are more powerful than
vendors
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Brand Communities (II)
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Why create a Brand Communitie?

• A Brand Lives in Symbols and Artifacts
• A Brand Community is a specialized,
  non-geographically bound community, based on a
  structured set of social relations among admirers
  of a brand (Muniz and O'Guinn 2001)
• Brand communities hold more brand-building
  potential than any other communication form
• Brand Community can support organization by
  providing a customer-centric marketing medium,
  and innovative ideas for new products and
  customizations.

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Exemplar Blog/Brand Communities
Lego Clubhttp//club.lego.comOracle OpenWorld
http//www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html Nike
Blog - The Art of Speed http//www.gawker.com/a
rtofspeed/ Harley Owner's Group - Harley
Davidson http//www.hog.com Red Hat Blog
http//blogs.redhat.com/ Channel 9 - Microsoft
http//channel9.msdn.com/ General Motors Blogs
http//smallblock.gmblogs.com/ Google Blogs
http//www.google.com/googleblog/
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Discussion
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Thank you for your participation
QUESTIONS apaparg_at_aueb.gr
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