Visualizing reciprocity to motivate participation in an online community

We used a design science approach to explore if a social visualization of the symmetry of relationships existing among members in an online community can motivate participation in terms of reciprocation and responding/commenting to each other's posts. Two different designs are presented: one successful and one that failed to stimulate acts of reciprocation among the users and to increase their level of participation. We analyze the reasons and suggest lessons to help researchers avoid similar failures.

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