Finding community in the comments: the role of reader and blogger responses in a weblog community of practice

This paper presents a study of the role that comments play in supporting blog-based communities of practice. Through a content analysis of both blog posts and their corresponding comments within a sample of blogs from an established online community of practice, certain characteristics emerge. The bloggers themselves post on topics that are tied to a shared practice among community members, engage in storytelling and reflection and invite comments. Blogs have been established as a safe place for the communal sharing of experiences and ideas. Comments from readers most often serve sharing functions and subsequent comments from the original poster most often are directly responsive to reader comments.

[1]  R. Kling,et al.  Group Behavior and Learning in Electronic Forums: A Sociotechnical Approach , 2003 .

[2]  Carolyn Wei.  Formation of Norms in a Blog Community , 2004 .

[3]  Elizabeth Sillence,et al.  Please advise: using the Internet for health and financial advice , 2007, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[4]  Ulrika Josefsson,et al.  Coping with Illness Online: The Case of Patients'Online Communities , 2005, Inf. Soc..

[5]  Cameron A. Marlow.  Audience, structure and authority in the weblog community , 2004 .

[6]  Vincent W. Hevern.  Threaded Identity in Cyberspace: Weblogs & Positioning in the Dialogical Self , 2004 .

[7]  N. Baym.  The emergence of on-line community , 1998 .

[8]  Neil S. Coulson,et al.  Receiving Social Support Online: An Analysis of a Computer-Mediated Support Group for Individuals Living with Irritable Bowel Syndrome , 2005, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[9]  M. Schreurs.  From the Bottom Up , 2008 .

[10]  Gordon Tullock.  What To Do, What To Do , 1983 .

[11]  Inna Kouper,et al.  Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis "From the Bottom Up" , 2005, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[12]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[13]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[14]  Lois Ann Scheidt,et al.  Weblogs as a bridging genre , 2005, Inf. Technol. People.