Online Communities: Design, Theory, and Practice

This special thematic section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together nine articles that provide a rich composite of the current research in online communities. The articles cover a range of topics, methodologies, theories and practices. Indirectly they all speak to design since they aim to extend our understanding of the field. The variety shown in these articles illustrates how broad the definition is of this rapidly growing field known as ‘online communities.’

[1]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Book Reviews : Online Communities: A Case Study of the Office of the Future , 1984 .

[2]  Jennifer Preece,et al.  Electronic Survey Methodology: A Case Study in Reaching Hard-to-Involve Internet Users , 2003, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[3]  Martin Wattenberg,et al.  Studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations , 2004, CHI.

[4]  Howard Rheingold,et al.  The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier , 2000 .

[5]  Warren Sack,et al.  Discourse diagrams: interface design for very large-scale conversations , 2000, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[6]  N. Baym.  Interpreting Soap Operas and Creating Community: Inside a Computer-Mediated Fan Culture , 1993 .

[7]  Jennifer Preece,et al.  A multilevel analysis of sociability, usability, and community dynamics in an online health community , 2005, TCHI.

[8]  Jennifer Preece,et al.  A framework for analyzing and understanding online communities , 2004, Interact. Comput..

[9]  N. Baym.  Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community , 1999 .

[10]  Quentin Jones,et al.  Virtual-Communities, Virtual Settlements & Cyber-Archaeology: A Theoretical Outline , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[11]  B. Wellman,et al.  Work, friendship, and media use for information exchange in a networked organization , 1998 .

[12]  S. Herring.  Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis : An Approach to Researching Online Behavior , 2004 .

[13]  Jenny Preece,et al.  Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability , 2000 .

[14]  Cynthia L. Selfe,et al.  Literacy, technology, and society : confronting the issues , 1997 .

[15]  B. Wellman.  An electronic group is virtually a social network. , 1997 .

[16]  Susan C. Herring,et al.  Gender and Participation in Computer-Mediated Linguistic Discourse. , 1992 .