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This study explores the phenomenon of multiactivity during recreational video-mediated communication (VMC) through the analysis of competing engagements. From a data corpus of naturally occurring interactions in public Google Hangouts, we focus on instances of competing engagements triggered by the co-presence of unratified participants in broadcasters’ physical environments. As users are immersed in their everyday spaces, interferences from their domestic sphere are common occurrences that break the participatory framework established in the digital sphere. Following a conversation analytic approach, we intend to show that these interferences lead to competing engagements that can be exploited rather than simply dealt with. Drawing on literature on multiactivity, we argue that participants at times organize and coordinate these multiple engagements to add playfulness and advance their interactions. In sum, this study aims to highlight how situated competing streams of action are coordinated and the purpose they may serve in recreational VMC.

Composite indicators (CIs) are common measurements and benchmarking tools used to measure multidimensional concepts such as well-being, education and more. Indicators and sub-indicators are selected and combined to reflect a measured phenomenon. Measurement iterations produce a series of time-oriented data, which stakeholders, as well as the general public, might be interested in interpreting. Visualization of a CI is highly recommended, in order to facilitate interpretation and enhance understanding of indicator components and their evolution over time. In recent years, a variety of CI visualizations have been published including various visualization techniques. Indeed, visualizing a CI is a complex and challenging issue, involving many design choices. However, there is a lack of guidelines and methodological approaches for CI visualization design. We suggest a framework that provides a systematic way of thinking of CI visualizations. The framework is intended for two uses: as a design tool when constructing a new CI visualization, and as an analytic tool for systematically describing, comparing and evaluating CI visualizations. The suggested framework is the outcome of both a top-down process, based on CI construction and information visualization literature, and a bottom-up process, in which 35 existing visualization applications of popular CIs were analyzed. We use Munzner’s visualization analysis and design framework (Munzner in Visualization analysis and design, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2014) in an adaptive way, considering the specific challenges and characteristics of CI visualizations, in order to develop and discuss a systematic view of the data, tasks and methods for visualizing CIs. We demonstrate the use of the framework with a case study analyzing the popular OECD Better Life Index visualization tool.

Online interruptions influence the amount of time spent on the cognitive task.The required compensation time is greater when interruptions conveyed by mobile phones than Internet application.Relative cognitive performance success is higher for those experienced poor interruption messages. This paper examine the effect of the richness of online interruption messages on cognitive performance quality. An experimental research design utilized a computerized simulation game to measure participants' cognitive performance. Manipulation was achieved by exposing five groups (N=120) to messages in 2×2 intervention design in mobile phones (SMS/MMS) and online application (text/banner).Results indicate a significant difference between experimental groups about the amount of time spent on the cognitive task. The analysis reveals a significant effect of the richness of the message on cognitive performance quality, and the main effect of medium. Nonetheless, the required compensation time was greater among the groups using mobile phones. Performing the task with a mobile phone required more time than with the Internet application. The mobile phone with MMS group had the longest recovery time of all the test groups.This study may provide some reasons to revisit and reconsider the popular expression, "a picture is worth a thousand words." Our findings run counter to Media Richness Theory, as we found that the degree of richness of the online interruption was not solely dictated by the properties of the conveying medium.

The increased use of online discussions in learning environments both formal and informal, positions the construct of interactivity as central to learning. Interactivity in learning communities' online discourse is viewed in this study as a socio-constructivist process. It is the network of interactions among content items and participants which drives a collective knowledge construction process. Conceptualizing interactivity in the literature is still unclear and not enough is known about its role in knowledge construction and about its relationship to learning outcomes. In addition, assessing learning outcomes using analytics has not matured fully and is still subject to intense development. This study thus sets out to investigate the role of interactivity as a process of knowledge construction within online discussions, and in particular, its association with learning outcomes, as measured by formal assessment tasks. We present significant positive correlations between various interactivity measures, taken from various learning communities, and a set of well-known learning assessments. We suggest that patterns of interactivity among learners can be measured, and teach us, not just about group dynamics and collaboration, but also about the actual individual learning process. We show an empirical operationalization framework for interactivity in learning communities.Interactivity measures and various learning outcomes assessments are positively associated.Interactivity dimensions are suggested, theoretically and empirically based.

Drawing on literature on interaction and participation in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and video-mediated communication (VMC), this study explores cross-modal exchanges with regards to participation in public video chats. By cross-modal, we wish to characterize interactions in which the production modality is different from the interlocutor's feedback modality, in the same communicative event and in synchronous fashion. Early research on recreational text-based CMC, especially Internet Relay Chat (IRC), has shown that initiating and maintaining interactions with strangers can be challenging. Our observations indicate that public video chats not only present these same challenges, but also that the availability of video and audio adds yet another level of complexity to issues of participation. Based on synchronous and naturally occurring interactions from public Google Hangouts, our analysis indicates that cross-modal exchanges are a means for participation mobility. Furthermore, this analysis brings attention to issues of visibility and noticeability in video chats.

Online social learning is a prevalent pedagogical tool, enabling learners across all ages and cultures to learn together. Educators, policy-makers, and international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) stress the need to assess collaborative learning systematically. However, the systematic assessment of large online groups’ collaboration is still in its infancy. In this chapter, we suggest perceiving social learning through the lens of interaction networks between learners and content. Based on well-accepted learning theories, we demonstrate the harnessing of digital traces of online discussions to the assessment of social learning, at both the individual and the group levels. Practically, our contribution is to suggest a network analysis point of view for the assessment of the performance and design of learning communities. Our proposed methodology can be used by instructors to open-up the black box of collaborative learning, to be able to equip learners with twenty-first-century skill-set.

Background:. The use of social media is growing tremendously along with its impact on the practice of plastic surgery, for better or for worse. Patients are increasingly using social media to obtain information about either the procedure or the surgeon. Objectives:. The aims of this study were to examine social media posting regarding plastic surgery and to analyze successful online communication methods of the plastic surgeons with the public. Methods:. A prospective analysis of 3 popular, global social media networks was performed, using the English language key phrases “plastic surgery” and “#plastic_surgery.” Three hundred posts related to plastic surgery published on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook in November 2017 were assessed by the following parameters: author identity, subject (self-promotion, educational, commercial, and personal posts), “social media currency” (likes, shares, comments, and views), and if special effects (videos, photos, etc.) or viral subjects such as reality stars or shaming were utilized. Results:. Sixty-three percentage of the posts on Instagram originated with plastic surgeons, compared with 18% on Facebook and only 13% on YouTube (P < 0.01); together, the plastic surgeons’ posts comprise 31% of the total posts, whereas 49% of posts published by commercial companies (P < 0.01). Most of the posts on Instagram were self-promotional (83%), in comparison to Facebook (29%) or YouTube (6%); P < 0.01. YouTube posts are more personal in nature compared with Instagram and Facebook [39%, 7%, 9%, respectively (P < 0.01)]. Educational content in the posts accounts for only 16% of them, P < 0.01. Shaming is seen in 21% of the posts, especially in Facebook (39%), and mainly related to famous public figures (25%); P < 0.05. Celebrity endorsed posts received more attention in every aspect of social media currency (likes, comments, shares, and views). The use of images of women attracts attention and is widely used in social media posts of plastic surgery (68%). Posts that chose to include videos (22%) are generously rewarded. Online shaming also attracts attention, mostly found in Facebook (39%), and mainly of a public figure (25%). The 10 most powerful attention drawing motives were jokes, attractive female plastic surgeons, celebrities, personal stories, provocative surgeries, videos or photos of surgeries, sex, shaming, and patient education. Conclusion:. Social media have become an important tool for self-promotion and a means to providing better customer service. This trend applies to the plastic surgeon as well. The study’s main insights were to use Instagram, personal stories, educational post, videos and other unique inputs, and involve celebrities in the posts. In general, it would be wise to invest and understand these communication platforms, as they have become the path to dominate the field.

A composite indicator (CI) is a measuring and benchmark tool used to capture multi-dimensional concepts, such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) usage. Individual indicators are selected and combined to reflect a phenomena being measured. Visualization of a composite indicator is recommended as a tool to enable interested stakeholders, as well as the public audience, to better understand the indicator components and evolution over time. However, existing CI visualizations introduce a variety of solutions and there is a lack in CI's visualization guidelines. Radial visualizations are popular among these solutions because of CI's inherent multi-dimensionality. Although in dispute, Radar-charts are often used for CI presentation. However, no empirical evidence on Radar's effectiveness and efficiency for common CI tasks is available. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by reporting on a controlled experiment that compares the Radar chart technique with two other radial visualization methods: Flower-charts as used in the well-known OECD Betterlife index, and Circle-charts which could be adopted for this purpose. Examples of these charts in the current context are shown in Figure 1 . We evaluated these charts, showing the same data with each of the mentioned techniques applying small multiple views for different dimensions of the data. We compared users' performance and preference empirically under a formal task-taxonomy. Results indicate that the Radar chart was the least effective and least liked, while performance of the two other options were mixed and dependent on the task. Results also showed strong preference of participants toward the Flower chart. Summarizing our results, we provide specific design guidelines for composite indicator visualization. Fig. 1: Three radial solutions for composite indicator visualizations compared empirically for users' performance and preferences.

Badges are a common gamification mechanism used by many crowd-sourced online systems. This study provides evidence to their effectiveness and measures their effect size using a big data natural experiment in three large Stack Exchange online Q&A sites. We analyze the introduction of 22 different badge-launch events and the resulting changes in user behavior. Consistent with earlier studies, we report that most badge introductions have the desired effect. Going beyond traditional findings on the individual level, this study measures overall badge effect size on the service.

Day-to-day information needed by citizens can be sought in a variety of ways. Specifically, we were interested in users of online, citizen rights websites, such as the SHIL site ( http://shil.info ). Our results report findings from three parallel data collection efforts. Surveys were undertaken to gain a better understanding of how the SHIL website is used and to compare the information needs and information sources used by SHIL users and potential users unaware of the existence of the website. The surveys were administered to samples from three populations (current users of this site, previous users of the site, and users who filled in an offline questionnaire and were mostly unaware of the existence of the SHIL website). We report several interesting differences between the three groups, and suggest future work on analyzing the site, its users, the content it provides and the needs it serves.

Composite Indicators (CIs), are a common measurement and benchmarking tool that are used to reflect and measure multidimensional concepts such as digital divides, individual's well-being and more. Measurement iterations produce a series of time-oriented data, which stakeholders as well as the general public might be interested to interpret. Visualization of a CI is highly recommended in order to ease interpretation, and many CI websites use radial solutions to visualize CIs. Yet it is unclear how to visualize the temporal dynamics in radial diagrams. Static solutions, mapping time to small multiples might be challenging due to screen space issues. Dynamic solutions are appealing, yet, there is no clear empirical evidence on benefits of dynamic time coding in radial diagrams. In this paper, we compare static vs. dynamic time mapping using two radial CI visualization methods. The popular Radar chart technique is compared to the innovative Flower chart as used in the well-known OECD Better Life index. We compare users' performance and preferences empirically under formal task taxonomy, adjusted to CI tasks. Results indicate that in general, static time encoding was more effective than dynamic encoding. Still, an in depth analysis showed that the dynamic approach is a feasible and sometimes even better solution for important CIs tasks, leveraged by the fact that users seem to like and enjoy it.

PurposeCitizens Advice Bureau (SHIL in Hebrew) is an information and referral service dedicated to serving the needs of citizens by providing easy access to information about citizenship rights and obligations. Many people turn to the offices of SHIL either for help or to volunteer as advisors. This study seeks to examine the information seeking behavior of SHIL volunteers supplying information services to citizens.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical foundations of the study are based on two existing models of information searching related to everyday life problems, Foster's non‐linear model of information seeking behavior and Bates's berry‐picking approach. This research employs a qualitative method. A total of 35 advisors in different SHIL branches were interviewed and the content of the interviews was analyzed, mapped and organized into categories by using concepts and terms revealed in the data.FindingsFindings show that volunteers at SHIL search information in a way that integrates the two models mentioned above, the berry‐picking model and the non‐linear model. In addition, findings point to difficulties that the advisors face in solving problems of the clients. These difficulties are connected with the different aspects relating to the flow of information both within and outside the organization and with organizational and administrative aspects at SHIL.Originality/valueThe information seeking behavior of volunteers acting as providers of information services has yet to be investigated at length and the understanding of their information behavior can be of value, since volunteering carries great importance in a democracy.

The widespread penetration of smart mobile devices has facilitated rapid growth of mobile location-based services (LBS), which provide users with a variety of benefits and are attractive from a marketing perspective. However, mobile-payment (M-Payment) adoption by users has been below expectations. For better understanding of drivers and inhibitors of the willingness to M-Pay for mobile LBS, this study contributes by conceptual modeling and empirical assessment of user willingness to M-Pay. To test the proposed conceptual research model, data from 122 valid responses were analyzed by employing the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique. The findings show that Perceived Risk is the main inhibitor of user willingness to M-Pay for LBS and that the magnitude of this inhibitor’s negative impact is at least twice the magnitude of any driver’s positive impact.

In this case study, wiki technology was applied to the development of an introductory academic textbook on information systems. While the development, production and distribution of traditional textbooks are influenced by commercial interests, the wikitextbook was developed collaboratively by faculty and by students, and was made available online free of charge. After about two years of activity, the wikitextbook accumulated 564 sub-chapters, co-authored by undergraduate and graduate students in more than 20 classes offered by seven academic departments across three Israeli universities. We discuss the potential of wikitextbooks as vehicles of empowerment to students, teachers, and the discipline. This type of collaborative online technology intimates an influence on the status-quo in academic education in favor of less empowered stakeholders. However, caution is advised in drawing premature conclusions from results reported here. The implementation of wikitextbook should be augmented by a careful study of cultural, societal, behavioral and pedagogic variables.

Networks offer the promise of sharing information. This project aims to experimentally investigate aspects of the propensity to share information online, with a specific focus on the system-induced status of information. Is a simple manipulation of the cognitive status of information sufficient to gain changes in sharing levels? A simple computerized game was used to simulate business decision situations that required participants to use information, and enabled sharing it. Our hypotheses compared the willingness to share under different conditions of system-induced ownership of information. Participants' perception of information source and ownership was the independent variable. Sharing was higher for privately owned expertise than it was for organizationally owned content. Ownership makes a difference. It serves to increase sharing of information. Ownership can and should be framed by system design.

This paper describes a Web-based and distributed system named QSIA that serves as an environment for learning, assessing and knowledge sharing. QSIA - Questions Sharing and Interactive Assignments-offers a unified infrastructure for developing, collecting, managing and sharing of knowledge items. QSIA enhances collaboration in authoring via online recommendations and generates communities of teachers and learners. At the same time, QSIA fosters individual learning and might promote high-order thinking skills among its users. QSIA's community, conceptual architecture, structure overview and implementations are discussed.

This study is an examination of a novel way for merging assessment and knowledge sharing in the context of a hybrid on-line learning system used in a postgraduate MBA course. MBA students carried out an on-line Question-Posing Assignment (QPA) that consisted of two components: Knowledge Developement and Knowledge Contribution. The students also performed self- and peer-assessment and took an on-line examination, all administered by QSIA-an on-line system for assessment and knowledge sharing. Our objective was to explore student's learning and knowledge sharing while engaged in the above. findings indicated that even controlling for the students' prior knowledge or abilities, those who were highly engaged in on-line question-posing and peer-assessment activity received higher scores on their final examination Compared to their counter peers. The results provide evidence that web-based activities can serve as both learning and assessment enhancers in higher education by promoting active learning, constructive criticism and knowledge sharing. We propose the on-line QPA as a methodology, and QSIA system as the technology for merging assessment and knowledge sharing in higher education.

Online spaces that enable shared public interpersonal communications are of significant social, organizational, and economic importance. In this paper, a theoretical model and associated unobtrusive method are proposed for researching the relationship between online spaces and the behavior they host. The model focuses on the collective impact that individual information-overload coping strategies have on the dynamics of open, interactive public online group discourse. Empirical research was undertaken to assess the validity of both the method and the model, based on the analysis of over 2.65 million postings to 600 Usenet newsgroups over a 6-month period. Our findings support the assertion that individual strategies for coping with “information overload” have an observable impact on large-scale online group discourse. Evidence was found for the hypotheses that: (1) users are more likely to respond to simpler messages in overloaded mass interaction; (2) users are more likely to end active participation as the overloading of mass interaction increases; and (3) users are more likely to generate simpler responses as the overloading of mass interaction grows. The theoretical model outlined offers insight into aspects of computer-mediated communication tool usability, technology design, and provides a road map for future empirical research.

This paper is an attempt to document empirically the relation between information sharing accomplished via electronic mail and the performance of teams. We report on an experimental study of the role of electronic mail in the operation of supply chains. A variation of the well known 'Beer Game' role-playing simulation game was computerized and implemented in an internet-based envi- ronment to study the information-sharing behaviour of teams. A total of 76 teams of four players each competed to achieve best net team profit. Results of the sim- ulation game permit a detailed examination of email use in an organizational con- text. Findings indicate the expected significant correlation between email use to share information up the supply chain and net team profit. In other words, sharing information in the team has a positive impact on performance. The recorded behaviour of managers in the online simulation indicates that team members use electronic mail successfully to attempt disintermediation of the supply chain. When information is shared online, teams perform significantly better.

This is a study of social facilitation effects in online auctions. We focus on the growth in online auctions, and the emergence of instant messaging and communication availability technologies. These two trends merge to provide a collaborative online social framework in which computer mediated communication may affect the behaviour of participants in online auctions. The interaction between buyers and sellers in traditional, face-to-face markets creates phenomena such as social facilitation, where the presence of others impacts behaviour and performance. In this study we attempt to replicate and measure social facilitation effects under the conditions of virtual presence. Does social facilitation apply to online auctions, and if so, how can it influence the design of online settings? We developed and used a simulated, Java-based Internet Dutch auction. Our findings indicate that social facilitation does indeed occur. In an experimental examination, participants improve their results and stay longer in the auction under conditions of higher virtual presence. Participants also indicate a preference for auction arrangements with higher degrees of virtual presence. Theoretically, this study contributes to the study of social facilitation, adding evidence of the effect when the presence is virtual.

Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts to encourage a desired type of behavior. In recent years gamification systems have been applied in marketing as well as non-business contexts such as politics, health, or interactive systems and education.

One of the methodological and logistic problems of network research is the challenge of big data. Dynamics and network qualities are not as easy to extrapolate as averages and distributions. The numbers are huge, and traditional sampling doesn’t solve the problem. What if, by using a small sub–group of the members of a population, we could understand the nature of the network connecting them? For instance, what if we could draw network analysis conclusions, such as predicting the outbreak and evolution of an epidemic, without measuring the entire network of individuals? Christakis and Fowler (2010, cited in Wilson, 2010) found a unique group of users that could predict an epidemic days before its peak in the relevant population.This study continues their work. Instead of exploring millions of online social activities, we suggest investigating the active users (as we define them) in their community and using their activity logs to build a partial network. This network of intensive users can depict the dynamics of a huge social network, in our case Yahoo! Answers intensive activities.Barabási, et al. (2002) explored the connection between topology and network size on real–life networks. Twelve years later, our online Q&A social network study reached the same findings and conclusion: the partial network has several basic topological parameters that correlate with activity parameters of the entire social network and, hence, make it suitable for depicting the dynamic parameters of the huge network.Since exploring online social lives is so interesting and time consuming, we believe that our findings can help the investigation of huge social networks. We call for further investigation of these findings and their implications.

This paper examines the importance of 'discourse architecture' and 'community' to the maintenance and growth of virtual publics. 'Virtual publics' are computer mediated discourse spaces created by using various technologies including email, the USENET, web based bulletin boards, IRC, MUDS, etc. It is argued that the over-emphasis to date on 'community' has discouraged systemic analysis of collaborative media systems. Further, it has distracted researchers' attention away from how 'discourse architecture' created by the interplay of technology and content can both enable and constrain the growth of a collaborative system's user population and participation. The paper suggests that systems-theory can be used to inform our understanding of virtual public growth. Further, we examine the genesis of virtual metropolises, where tens of thousands of individuals are engaged in public computer-mediated discourse. We suggest that an effective virtual public segmentation strategy is an essential element for those wis...

This study defines and explores relations between knowledge-seeking and social relationship networks, using data from a popular Q&A social network site. Our theoretical framework draws on Motivation, Common-goods, and Social capital theories to generate an understanding of the interrelationship of the two types of networks. A dataset consisting of 19 months of activity on Q&A Yahoo! Answers provides the basis for answering the following questions: Does a reciprocal relationship exist between the two networks? Is there a positive correlation in either size or growth between the two? Who are their members and actual participants? How does the social capital created by the social activities influence the asker's satisfaction? Finally, can the growth of one network come at the expense of the other? Findings suggest a positive correlation between the knowledge-seeking network and the social network, Social capital does contribute to askers' satisfaction and furthermore, under certain conditions, one network might grow at the expense of the other. Theoretical and practical implications for the mutual dependency of social ties and informational provision are discussed.

A virtual knowledge-building community is a group of people who collaboratively produce knowledge through an online-mediated environment. The process and means for sharing and producing knowledge in such a community can be described as a place where “knowledge creation is built into the social fabric and into the technologies that support knowledge work” (Scardamalia, 2001). Virtual knowledge-building community is a unique case of a virtual community in which the processes of knowledge building are preformed through interactions between group members. In the early twenty-first century, on the Internet we observe a rapid growth in the number of virtual knowledgebuilding communities. These include joint authoring tools, collaborative tagging arrangements, collective recommendation aggregators, and other creative uses of the Internet. One of the most prominent forms of virtual communities involved in the practice of building knowledge, are the ‘open source’ communities such as the Wikipedia project (Rafaeli, Hayat, & Ariel, 2005).

Collaborative mass media are a new type of mass communications medium in which the audience acts both as the source and the receiver of the message. Theories of discretionary data base contributions and critical mass theory offer parallel explanations for the success of collaborative media. The present research integrated the predictions of these two perspectives in the context of a national survey of public electronic bulletin board systems. The study documented the nature and extent of electronic bulletin board use and compared predictions about the success of collaborative media based on the two theoretical perspectives. File contribution levels and system adoption rates were both found to be directly related to a measure of symmetry in user participation. Content diversity was directly related to contribution levels, but not to overall adoption levels. The results provided limited support for discretionary data base theory.

Cyberspace has introduced new and intriguing means for knowledge sharing as well as new structures of mediated knowledge-building communities. Considering the various forms of online communities, it should be difficult to overstate the significance of Wikipedia as a landmark in building communal knowledge repositories. Wikipedia is an online collaboratively written encyclopedia. It has unique aspects of users’ involvement in the production of content and its function as a community. In less than five years of existence, Wikipedia has acquired both avid advocates and ardent adversaries. Although there have been some public and academic debates about the quality of its content, as the rapid growth of its articles and numbers of active users (Wikipedians) continues, most people agree that at least the English version of Wikipedia is approaching critical mass where substantial content disasters should become rare. Wikipedia’s existence and success rely on users’ inputs. Our chapter focuses on Wikipedians’ incentives for contributing to Wikipedia. The popular observation is that Wikipedia only works in practice. In theory, it can never work. How does Wikipedia mobilize the levels of participation that make it “work in practice”? Wikipedia’s growth, from the time of its foundation in 2001, has been impressive in all conceivable dimensions. Expansion metrics have accelerated in terms of volume, numbers of articles, visitors, and percentage of contributors. There are, by the time of this writing, 250 language editions of Wikipedia. The English-language version is the largest. It contains more than two million articles. The German-language version has more than half a million articles and the French, Polish, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese versions each boast over 100,000 articles.

All information exchange on the Internet -- whether through full text, controlled vocabularies, ontologies, or other mechanisms -- ultimately requires that that an information provider and seeker use the same word or symbol. In this paper, we investigate what happens when both searchers and authors are dynamically choosing terms to match the other side. With each side trying to anticipate the other, does a terminological convention ever emerge, or do searchers and providers continue to miss potential partners through mis-match of terms? We use a game-theoretic setup to frame questions, and learning theory to make predictions about whether and which term will emerge as a convention.

Question and answer (Q&A) sites such as Yahoo! Answers are places where users ask questions and others answer them. In this paper, we investigate predictors of answer quality through a comparative, controlled field study of responses provided across several online Q&A sites. Along with several quantitative results concerning the effects of factors such as question topic and rhetorical strategy, we present two high-level messages. First, you get what you pay for in Q&A sites. Answer quality was typically higher in Google Answers (a fee-based site) than in the free sites we studied, and paying more money for an answer led to better outcomes. Second, we find that a Q&A site's community of users contributes to its success. Yahoo! Answers, a Q&A site where anybody can answer questions, outperformed sites that depend on specific individuals to answer questions, such as library reference services.

Faculty from five universities will discuss their groups' respective teaching and learning wikis. The group assembled here represents several divergent approaches and projects to harnessing the collaborative and open-source nature of Wikis to the tasks of teaching, educating inquiry and training.We will discuss and compare Wiki projects that cover diverse methods and content fields. Projects include secondary, undergraduate, and graduate level courses. Systems we describe address groups varying in size from roughly a dozen to hundreds of students. We approach the ontology and pedagogy of Wiki-based educational materials drawing on cognitive and social constructivism, a theory of inquiry-based learning, and an interest in information markets and online sharing dynamics. Projects included in this panel have received financial support from a variety of granting agencies, including the Israeli Internet Association, U.S. National Science Foundation, the GVU Center at Georgia Institute of Technology, SHOHAM at The Open University of Israel, and InfoSoc at the University of Haifa.We created and now study widely different implementations of Wiki usage in education that reflect a variety of instructional approaches. In all of the projects we have completed at least one cycle of use, and can therefore report on outcomes that include user feedback, reactions and satisfaction; impact on learning; impact on grade; non-obtrusive measures of usage patterns; and external measures of quality of the content generated and preserved. Our findings address the issues of design considerations, multilingual and multicultural content, group dynamics, evaluation and quality control. We wish to use this panel to share lessons learned and discuss a variety of usage modes, in search of "best practice" models as well as share lessons learned that apply to future modifications and additions to the code.

The asymmetry of activity in virtual communities is of great interest. While participation in the activities of virtual communities is crucial for a community's survival and development, many people prefer lurking, that is passive attention over active participation. Lurking can be measured and perhaps affected by both dispositional and situational variables. This work investigates the concept of cultural capital as situational antecedent of lurking and de-lurking (the decision to start posting after a certain amount of lurking time). Cultural capital is defined as the knowledge that enables an individual to interpret various cultural codes. The main hypothesis states that a user's cultural capital affects her level of activity in a community and her decision to de-lurk and cease to exist in very active communities because of information overload. This hypothesis is analyzed by mathematically defining a social communication network (SCN) of activities in authenticated discussion forums. We validate this model by examining the SCN using data collected in a sample of 636 online forums in Open University in Israel and 2 work based communities from IBM. The hypotheses verified here make it clear that fostering receptive participation may be as important and constructive as encouraging active contributions in online communities.

SHIL on the Webp is the website of the Israeli Citizens' Advice Bureau. This is a high traffic site, where the sources of most of the external hits are result pages of general search engines. In this paper we analyzed these external hits with an emphasis on the specific queries submitted to the general search engines (e.g., Google and MSN). The findings provide an insight to the general interests of the Israeli web users related to citizens' information.

Like archaeological Tells, large mounds resulting from the accumulation of human settlement debris, the remains of virtual communities can inform researchers about phenomena operating at many levels. However, for excavations to be effective, they need to be conducted within the framework of a scientific research program. The theory of interactive communication in cyber places developed here distinguishes between the social relationships that emerge from interactive group computer-mediated communication, and the cyber places where such communication occurs. It also links the density and form of cyber material to communication technology types. In so doing, it identifies four distinct levels of analysis: i) individual behavior or social theory; ii) spatial and temporal patterning of artifacts in cyberspace; iii) technology and the parameters of human interaction; and iv) cyber-ecology or online behavior and resource supply. The recognition of four distinct levels of analysis allows for the production of a hierarchy of social explanation for cybersociety. To date, the majority of research into online behavior has focused on the level of social theory. However, a balanced understanding of all levels of the hierarchy is preferable. The theory outlined is also linked to a research program into the material aspects of computer-mediated communication. Research into this under-represented level should inform e-commerce strategists as well as those interested in usability as a group level concept.

One of the unknowns of emailing is the time it will take the receiver to form and post a reply. Response times vary considerably, and the chronemics of email are an important non-verbal cue which can convey meaning as well as influence interactional coherence. While privacy and technical challenges have so far limited quantitative assessment of responsiveness chronemics, an opportunity became available with the recent release into the public domain of an unprecedentedly large corporate collection of private email messages. An analysis of over 16,000 responses extracted from a large database of email messages created by Enron employees was performed. Responsiveness profiles of individual users and of all users are described, and their aggregate temporal distribution is evaluated. The generalizability of these findings as well as their implication to current theory on email response times is discussed.

What is the network form of online discussion groups? What are the topological parameters delineating the interaction on such groups? We report an empirical examination of the form of online discussion groups. We are interested in examining whether such groups conform to the Small World and the Scale Free models of networks. Support for these expectations provides a formal expression of growth, survival potential and preferential attachment in the connection patterns in discussion groups. The research questions were tested with a sample of over 8,000 active participants, and over 30,000 messages. We find that the social network resulting from discussion groups is indeed a Scale Free Network, based on In, Out and All Degree distributions. We also find that, for the same sample, discussion groups are a Small World Network too. As expected, the clustering coefficients for these groups differ significantly from random networks, while their characteristic path lengths are similar to random networks. Implications of the topology for the design and understanding of discussion groups include the stability and control of such groups, as well as their longevity.

The asymmetry of activity in virtual communities is of great interest. While participation in the activities of virtual communities is crucial for a community's survival and development, many people prefer lurking, that is passive attention over active participation. Often, lurkers are the vast majority. There could be many reasons for lurking. Lurking can be measured and perhaps affected by both dispositional and situational variables. This project investigates social and cultural capital, situational antecedents of lurking and de-lurking. We propose a novel way of measuring such capital, lurking, and de-lurking. We try to figure out what are the triggers to active participation. We try to answer this by mathematically defining a social communication network of activities in authenticated discussion forums. Authenticated discussion forums provide exact log information about every participant's activities and allow us to identify lurkers that become first time posters. The proposed social communication network approach (SCN) is an extension of the traditional social network methodology to include, beyond human actors, discussion topics (e.g. Usenet newsgroups threads) and subjects of discussions (e.g. Usenet groups) as well. In addition, the social communication network approach distinguishes between READ and POST link types. These indicate active participation on the part of the human actor. We attempt to validate this model by examining the SCN using data collected in a sample of 82 online forums. By analyzing a graph structure of the network at moments of initial postings we verify several hypotheses about causes of de-lurking and provide some directions towards measuring active participation in virtual communities.

The large-scale adoption of computer mediated communication technologies has resulted in what has been described as "mass interaction": shared discourse between hundreds, thousands or more individuals. A number of theoretical papers have made the argument that because of the existence of various technological and psychological constraints, the forms that mass interaction takes, can be understood partly in terms of system dynamics. In particular, it has been suggested that user information overload results in nonlinear feedback loops which impacts on discourse structure. This paper describes an empirical examination of three hypothesized effects of such loops by the analysis of 2.65 million USENET messages posted to 600 newsgroups over a 6-month period. Statistical analysis of the data demonstrated the existence of the hypothesized effects and support the assertion that individual 'information overload' coping strategies have an observable impact on mass interaction discourse dynamics. This in turn suggests that the usability of computer mediated communication technologies can be examined in terms of group-level usability.

'Virtual publics' are computer-mediated discourse spaces created by using various technologies including email, the USENET, web based bulletin boards, IRC, MUDS, etc. [3]. This paper outlines ongoing field research into the stress zones or boundaries to interactive virtual public discourse produced by information overload. It describes initial findings, based on an examination of 2.65 million USENET messages, which suggest that information overload impacts on discourse structure. Findings include a higher proportional user turnover, and shorter messages in relation to group size. The research in progress addresses issues associated with group level usability of communication technologies.

This is an empirical study of the effects of learning and experience on bidding behaviour in repeated simulated internet English and Dutch auctions. First, we introduce a simulation framework for the learning and research of behaviour in internet auctions. In this online simulation framework, human participants play against simulated bidders. Later we describe the characteristics, abilities and limitations of this framework. In the second part of the article we report on a study, conducted using the same environment, of the effects of learning and experience on bidding behaviour in repeated English and Dutch auctions. We found evidence for a strategy change over time and compared the difference in learning between the two auction models.

The public access electronic bulletin board is a medium which serves middle-sized audiences. It is a growing medium both in terms of audience size and in proliferation of outlets. Its public image has been charged with a mix of exaggerations. The present paper argues that the medium and its audiences deserve an investigation that precedes assumptions of positive or negative massive effects. Instead, its special participative and interactive nature prescribes a uses-and-gratifications approach to the study of motivations and actual use. In a survey of the participants in one such electronic bulletin board the findings paint a picture of quite extensive use, usually carried out for purposes other than those emphasized by either pessimists or optimists. The role of Ludenic (or play) motivation and behavior is given special attention in the context of studying the use of this computerized application as a medium.

What if software packages carried advertising messages? What if off-the-shelf software packages were paid for by commercial concerns seeking the attention of prospective audiences rather than their pocketbooks? Do we know how to price the use of software? Can advertising help software? Is software fit for advertising? The title suggested here for the possibility of funding some software through advertising is ‘Soapware’. Both the provocative nature and the double-edged connotation of the title warrant discussion. But the Soapware suggestion is also a vehicle for the introduction of some broader issues. Three theoretical statements are proposed: (1) Large portions of the software market are in transition to mass production, transforming the nature of the market. (2) The phenomenon of software theft is detrimental to all users. Software theft is damaging to the public at large, as well as to producers of stolen code. In this sense, software has become a ‘public good’, and software theft has created a ‘Tragedy of Commons’. (3) Contemporary economic trends in the software market impose a product orientation on off-the-shelf software, contradicting the traditional, paradigmatic conception of software as process. The Soapware proposal may offer a way out of all three predicaments. Findings from a pilot study of the feasibility of advertising support for software production are discussed, especially the potential damage to user satisfaction, and potential gains. The experiment reported, based on 150 users of a commercial package, indicates high recall rates, no loss in user satisfaction, and several innovative ways of using software for advertising. The experimental findings indicate some interesting characteristics of software as an expressive medium. Lastly, some broader ethical, economic, and theoretical implications of the Soapware possibility are raised.

We view information sharing as a promising target of research. technology and human practice have been evolving toward more opportunities and varied manners in which information can be shared. We propose that 'information sharing' is best understood as a continuum that concomitantly reflects behavioural, social, economic, legal, and technological influences. 'Information' is a hybrid of both 'public' and 'private' goods. The mechanisms that enable, predict, and catalyse sharing behaviour in online contexts should be of major interest to both scholars and practitioners of knowledge systems. We cite a spectrum of analytical as well as empirical research on the topic of sharing, identifying the methods and theories used in the approaches to date. We also review the major online technology genres of import for sharing. We suggest an initial map of constructs to chart future research on sharing.