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PurposeThe purpose of this article is to obtain an in-depth insight into the nature and impact of customers´ cocreation experiences in online communities and the effects of customer cocreation on innovation processes.Design/methodology/approachThis study is focused on an online cocreation community created by a market research company on behalf of a company. By means of a case study approach and through in-depth interviews, the authors identify the actual customer experiences and measure (or assess) the degree of involvement of customer creativity and experience in new idea generation.FindingsCocreation experience can be enhanced through evoking pragmatic, sociability, usability and hedonic experiences and more positive experiences and therefore, outcomes of collaborative innovation in online communities can be achieved. Findings show a classification of each role the community moderator/community manager and peer online community members perform as antecedents of cocreation experience, highlight the value of group feeling/sense of community/sense of belonging and homophily/communality in achieving that, the nature of a supportive online platform and give an overview of positive and negative outcomes of cocreation experience.Originality/valueThis case study provides with valuable insights in the phenomenon of customer cocreation and how to enhance participation of community members in collaborative innovation in online communities through positive experience, which is important for businesses involved in innovation trajectories and product and service improvement efforts.

Purpose: The current study explores the spillover effects of offensive commenting in online community from the lens of emotional and behavioral contagion. Specifically, it examines the contagion of swearing –a linguistic mannerism that conveys high arousal emotion –based upon two mechanisms of contagion: mimicry and social interaction effect. Design/methodology/approach: The study performs a series of mixed-effect logistic regressions to investigate the contagious potential of offensive comments collected from YouTube in response to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign videos posted between January and April 2016. Findings: The study examines non-random incidences of two types of swearing online: public and interpersonal. Findings suggest that a first-level (a.k.a. parent) comment’s public swearing tends to trigger chains of interpersonal swearing in the second-level (a.k.a. child) comments. Meanwhile, among the child-comments, a sequentially preceding comment’s swearing is contagious to the following comment only across the same swearing type. Based on the findings, the study concludes that offensive comments are contagious and have impact on shaping the community-wide linguistic norms of online user interactions. Originality/value: The study discusses the ways in which an individual’s display of offensiveness may influence and shape discursive cultures on the Internet. This study delves into the mechanisms of text-based contagion by differentiating between mimicry effect and social interaction effect. While online emotional contagion research to this date has focused on the difference between positive and negative valence, Internet research that specifically look at the contagious potential of offensive expressions remain sparse.

Drawing on a critical social-psychological framework for discourse analysis, data from a popular forum for people over 50 were analysed to study how the habitual use of benzodiazepines and Z-drugs (BZD/Z) is discursively negotiated by Flemish older adults. We present five different repertoires (risk and addiction; alternative pathways; suffering; rationalisation; cessation) that illustrate how a pharmaceutical imaginary of these medications is constructed online and how posters act as reflexive users taking on a health role. Most repertoires emerge from a tacit norm on the undesirability of medication use for sleeping problems. In the alternative pathways and cessation repertoires this norm is implicitly accepted by focussing on how to either prevent or overcome chronic use with various alternative solutions or through tapering off, while the risk and addiction repertoire is used to more openly defend and discursively magnify the idea that medication has to be avoided at all cost. We discuss how this reflects a prevailing imperative of health and ethos of healthicisation of sleep. The rationalisation and suffering repertoires on the other hand challenge this norm by defending medication use. We further explore how these repertoires are used to self-position as either ‘noble non-user’, ‘deserving and/or compliant patient’ or ‘rational user’, reflecting previously found moral positions in offline settings. Our data add another position that has thus far not been discussed extensively with regard to prescription medication use, namely that of a ‘recovered user’. As such, this study shows how this particular online community is a site for contestation of health promotion and medical/pharmaceuticalised discourses on sleep by users and non-users alike and offers a unique insight into how people in the age group that is known to use most BZD/Z discursively negotiate the use of these medications in pseudonymised online interactions.

Whilst doctoral supervision online has become almost routine, the COVID19 pandemic significantly changed research supervision. Supervisors were distanced from colleagues and co-supervisors, with less opportunity for the informal and unplanned conversations through which supervisory challenges may be shared and mentoring take place. An accredited Communities of Practice for Doctoral Supervision has been in operation at (institution) since 2015. Designed to run face to face with small groups, the programme moved online in Spring 2020 due to the lock-down in the UK. Surveying the experiences of facilitators and participants, this paper reflects on the challenges and changes of moving conversations online. Online professional development did require more structured facilitation to effectively support openness, honesty and trust amongst supervisors. Whilst online tools bring benefits in accessibility and democracy, a fundamental component of the successful move online was identified as the human element, supervisors as facilitators crafting a sense of community and belonging.

COVID-19 and its imposed social confinement entailed a radical shift in research, supervision and learning in doctoral education. Heightened flexibility in delivery, sensitivity and compassion and greater reliance on technology sought to address not merely scholars' pedagogical but holistic needs, which became more prominent during the pandemic. Face-to-face doctoral supervision and academic events were conducted online to overcome hurdles presented by 'social distancing'. We examine how the dynamics of our group supervision for international doctoral scholars changed after shifting to online mode. We employed an autoethnographic approach to highlight evolving rewards and challenges in conducting online meetings with a group of international scholars. Focusing on this group is timely since the 'working-from-home' mode contributed to doctoral scholars' isolation and stress that they experienced. This paper: a) exemplifies the psychological benefits fostered by online meetings;and b) highlights creative virtual pedagogies and practices worth adopting even after the pandemic is over. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Innovations in Education & Teaching International is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Involuntary celibates, or “incels,” have received increased public attention in past years, likely as a result of media reports that link incels to incidents of mass violence. Although prior research has examined various elements of the online community, none have directly engaged with incels to understand the causes and effects of their inceldom. Using a hegemonic masculinity framework, this article analyzes data from interviews with incels (N = 10) to identify emergent themes about their situations, attitudes, and experiences. The data reveal that the participants feel that they 1) experience masculinity challenges that affect their romantic opportunities, 2) are marginalized or treated as “subhumans” due to their appearance or other characteristics, and as a result, 3) experience negative emotions related to their inceldom. This, in turn, affects their belief in the BlackPill and their online behavior such as shit-posting. Supported by interview data, these findings can highlight both the similarities and diversity of thought within the incel community while also examining the ways that hegemonic masculinity can lead to the marginalization of specific groups of men. As such, this study can inform future research about incels, suggesting that it should include continued interaction with members of the community and quantitative survey research about incels. Furthermore, it can outline and inform intervention strategies addressing the negative effects of gender hegemony that should be considered for individual approaches to inceldom.

People with mental distress are increasingly turning to one-to-one synchronous communication websites to receive peer support from other members. Though some research has identified benefits and challenges of online peer-support, there is a limited understanding of how to best prepare and scaffold for untrained peer supporters as they attempt to become skillful in an online setting. We recruited 30 (15 pairs) participants to engage in an online support conversation about procrastination problems, gave one member of each pair minimal training in the principles and strategies of motivational interviewing, and used interviews and conversation transcripts to examine challenges novice helpers faced when providing support and learning new conversational skills. We presented the helpers with two conversation goals to achieve with the conversation: building understanding, and promoting readiness for change. The research identified the common strategies the helpers used to achieve these goals and the challenges they faced. We also discuss theoretical and design implications for platform designers to better scaffold this experience.

Content moderation is an essential part of online community health and governance. While much of extant research is centered on what happens to the content, moderation also involves the management of violators. This study focuses on how moderators (mods) make decisions about their actions after the violation takes place but before the sanction by examining how they "profile" the violators. Through observations and interviews with volunteer mods on Twitch, we found that mods engage in a complex process of collaborative evidence collection and profile violators into different categories to decide the type and extent of punishment. Mods consider violators' characteristics as well as behavioral history and violation context before taking moderation action. The main purpose of the profiling was to avoid excessive punishment and aim to integrate violators more into the community. We discuss the contributions of profiling to moderation practice and suggest design mechanisms to facilitate mods' profiling processes.

The Negro Motorist Green Book was a tool used by the Black community to navigate systemic racism throughout the U.S. and around the world. Whether providing its users with safer roads to take or businesses that were welcoming to Black patrons, The Negro Motorist Green Book fostered pride and created a physical network of safe spaces within the Black community. Building a bridge between this artifact which served Black people for thirty years and the current moment, we explore Black Twitter as an online space where the Black community navigates identity, activism, racism, and more. Through interviews with people who engage with Black Twitter, we surface the benefits (such as community building, empowerment, and activism) and challenges (like dealing with racism, appropriation, and outsiders) on the platform, juxtaposing the Green Book as a historical artifact and Black Twitter as its contemporary counterpart. Equipped with these insights, we make suggestions including audience segmentation, privacy controls, and involving historically disenfranchised perspectives into the technological design process. These proposals have implications for the design of technologies that would serve Black communities by amplifying Black voices and bolstering work toward justice.

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to affect people who have had previous experiences of psychosis – either positively or negatively. A research gap exists in looking at qualitative experiences of the pandemic. In the present study, we address the research gap in those who self-identified as having psychosis via Reddit discussion forum posts, collecting data from a popular online community. Sixty-five posts were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Five overarching themes were identifie; declining mental health, changed psychosis experiences, personal coping experiences, social connectedness and disconnectedness, and COVID-19 as a metaphor. The data show that there are varied experiences associated with the pandemic. People who have experiences of psychosis do not only have vulnerabilities but may also perceive themselves as having strengths that allow them to cope better.

Online Q&A communities serve as important channels for diffusing knowledge. Questions, the main content in these forums, are not well investigated in the research literature. This study explores why some questions attract more attention in this context by emphasizing the knowledge network embedded in the questions. We examine how the characteristics of the question tags impact the popularity of the questions by collecting data from a programming-related Q&A site—Stack Overflow. We collected data for ten years, spanning the years 2008 to 2017, and included 6,833,276 users and 34,857,917 questions and answers in the analyses. The empirical analyses indicated that the frequency of the question tag is positively related to the popularity of the question. Additionally, the tag distance of the questions is curvilinearly related to the popularity of the questions in an inverted U-shape. Our study contributes to research discussions on how knowledge is diffused in an online community and further examines how these types of online forums efficiently promote knowledge sharing through the presentation of user’s questions.

Affective activation, and the community engagement it fosters, is the driving mechanism of all fandoms, irrespective of the specific “objects of affection” around which they coalesce. These centralized objects of affection may hail from popular culture, such as in the form of sports teams, television shows, cartoon characters, or musicians. As fan scholars have increasingly recognized, fandoms can also emerge around profit-driven brands, specific politicians, and social movements. Much has been said regarding the dangers of the online conspiracy theory QAnon. However, these warnings have tended to overemphasize the rapidly evolving, amorphous beliefs of its adherents, rather than recognize the affective activation propelling the movement. Through its analysis of affect-driven communities, the field of fan studies can be productively applied to investigate the online discursive activities of QAnon community members. Framing QAnon as a fandom elucidates the functions through which the conspiracy theory radicalizes “normies” by exploiting the types of fan activities already well-established in mainstream fan communities. Underscoring the transferability of fan studies concepts to political movements and communities, this exploration outlines the societal stakes of QAnon’s manipulation and normalization of the toxic emotions cohering its adherents into a fanatic community.

In recent years, Korean migrants to Australia have turned increasingly to digital culture as a space of information exchange, support, and belonging. The need for a space in which the ‘politics of ...

The present article discusses the notion of translation hacking and attempts to chart the history of this practice in the Arabic context. It also discusses the current practices of translation hacking by examining the work of a well-organized online community of Arab translation hackers called Games in Arabic (GiA). To this end, the study adopts two methods for data collection. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the first translation hackers in the Arab world in order to document the history of this practice. Second, a cyberethnographic approach was adopted to collect qualitative data related to GiA, including their translation hacking practices and the technologies used to facilitate their collaborative work. Subsequently, this article attempts to reveal the roles played by the different GiA community members in executing their projects and how they control for quality in their work. Ultimately, the article attempts to provide insights into the practice of Arabic game localization performed by amateur translators, hackers, and gamers, in the hope of adding to current professional and pedagogical practices in Arabic game localization.

Objectives Limited research and guidance on the use of “withdrawal” or coitus interruptus for contraception lead to inconsistent or even inaccurate physician recommendations regarding its use. Consequently, patients rely on online communities to learn about this commonly used contraceptive method. To identify knowledge gaps and concerns between men and women, as well as explore how they use withdrawal, we examined withdrawal-related posts on the popular internet discussion forum, Reddit. Study design To explore gendered variations in withdrawal-related Reddit posts, we extracted posts from the gendered forums: “TwoXChromosomes,” “Askwomen,” “Askmen,” and “OneY” between 2010 and 2019 that contained the search terms: “coitus interruptus,” “withdrawal,” “pull out,” “preejaculate,” or “precum.” We developed an initial codebook with expected codes and augmented it with emerging findings from a random sampling of 10% of posts. We revised iteratively for interrater agreement, after which researchers coded the remaining posts independently. Results Of 269 withdrawal-related queries, 19% were submitted by men; 81% referenced the contributor's own withdrawal use. Salient domains included: concerns about pregnancy risk (59%), how to effectively use withdrawal (13%), benefits/pleasure from using withdrawal (12%), impact on personal life/relationship (9%), and problems encountered, inclusive of consent (7%). Posts to female-focused forums more frequently inquired about pregnancy risk, while those on male forums more frequently inquired about withdrawal-related logistics (p Conclusion Withdrawal-related queries within this Reddit sample are frequently posted by women, the majority of whom want to understand their risk of pregnancy with withdrawal. Research operationalizing withdrawal and more accurately estimating withdrawal-related pregnancy risk is warranted. Implications Reddit users discuss their personal experiences with withdrawal as contraception, as well as seek advice regarding its use from the online community. Pregnancy risk, logistics of use, and ongoing stigma are salient topics. Further research on pregnancy risk, operationalizing success, and approaches for discussing this behavioral method is warranted.

Objective Reddit is one of the most popular websites in the United States because of its user-driven aggregation and community-based curation of online content. We describe the use and impact of Reddit's Ask Me Anything platform, for public engagement and education about developments in hormonal male contraception (HMC). Methods We analyzed the content from and user engagement with 2 Reddit Ask Me Anything events that answered user queries about HMC in June 2018 and March 2019. Clinical trial investigators provided real-time responses throughout the events. We examined the 25 most popular posts from each event, analyzing content for salient themes via an inductive approach. To quantify event impact, we examined Google Trends data and subsequent traffic to the investigator website. Results Over 18,000 registered Reddit users interacted with each of the 2 Ask Me Anything events, with each generating over 1600 comments. The most popular posts of each Ask Me Anything event expressed interest in off-target effects associated with the use of HMCs. Additional themes included queries about previous and ongoing clinical trials, HMC physiology, and market analyses and projections of public willingness to use HMCs. The events coincided with a spike in both Google searches for “male birth control” and first-time visits to the study's website where users could express interest in participating in clinical trials. Conclusion Reddit Ask Me Anything events conducted by HMC investigators revealed wide public interest in HMCs. The events prompted further searches for more information on male contraception, while driving traffic to the investigator website for trial recruitment purposes. Implications Reddit Ask Me Anything events are a popular, cost-free online platform for publicly responding to a range of HMC-related queries, while providing investigators with insight into stakeholder priorities and preoccupations.

Purpose This study aims to explain the value co-creation and co-destruction practices of older adults in an online community (OC). Design/methodology/approach Adopting practice theory and service-dominant logic as a theoretical perspective, this paper examined an OC of older adults by conducting an inductive thematic analysis of the interactions of the participants in the community. Findings The analysis revealed older adults engage with three value co-creation plus one value co-destruction practices in the OC including, communal coping practices, happiness creation practices, social capital generation practices and disparaging practices for older adults. Research limitations/implications Illustrated in a conceptual model, this study extends previous work evidencing OCs serve as a platform for value co-creation and value co-destruction activities in the context of older adults. Further, it suggests OCs facilitate resilience of older adults through value co-creation practices. Recognition of value co-destruction in OCs is critical as it is detrimental to the resilience of older adults. This study provides the needed foundation to advance knowledge on the use of OCs by older adults and suggests future research directions. Practical implications Identifying co-creation and co-destruction practices of older adults in OCs enables service providers (e.g. caregivers) to engage better in online value co-creation practices. Further, the findings of this study address one of the main priorities of service science to investigate the impact of value co-creation on well-being. Originality/value Despite the significant engagement of older adults in OCs, there is a lack of enough knowledge in the literature regarding value co-creation and co-destruction practices of older adults in OCs. This study addressed this gap by explaining how older adults co-create and co-destruct value in online spaces.

The relative lack of research on the relocation of women to foreign assignments prompted this study that focused on a large online community of women in relocation. We examined the relationship between two support types, perceived social support (PSS) and online support, and well-being measures (meaning in life, depression, and loneliness) in the new setting. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that (a) PSS and online support positively relate to personal resilience and optimism, (b) resilience and optimism positively associate with well-being levels, and (c) resilience and optimism mediate the association between both types of support and well-being. Two waves of data (T1 & T2) were collected in the current study. The results largely reflected the propositions, with some deviations from the expected model, and indicated that resilience was the more prominent mediator at both T1 and T2. A complex pattern of relationships was documented between various types of virtual support and well-being. Women who received social support could foster a positive, optimistic future perspective experience and an increased sense of meaning in their lives. This study engendered implications for organizations’ appropriate preparation of relocating staff, in general, and the relocation of women employees, in particular.

During COVID-19 pandemic, people experienced lockdown and associated distress. As face-to-face intervention was unfeasible, an 8-week Strength-based Online Community Intervention (SOCI) was developed and evaluated with a quasi-experimental design in Hubei Province, China from February to April 2020. Participants (N = 150) self-elected to join either the SOCI group or a casual discussion control group. Pre-/post-measures on post-traumatic stress, positive and negative affect, resilience, and spirituality were taken. Multivariate ANOVA revealed a significant combined effect with a medium effect size (partial eta squared = 0.11). Specifically, significant group × time interaction effects were revealed for resilience, spirituality, and positive affect. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The global pandemic caused a crisis in the Ukrainian cinema industry. Some entities were closed, but the biggest market players were able to concentrate their efforts on interacting with visitors through social networks, public attention, frequent press mentions and discussions of influencers as synergies of communication policy tools. The purpose of the paper is to make proposals for improving the communication policy of cinema chains under new challenges. Based on a system analysis and indices of activity in social media of ten key Ukrainian cinema chains during the COVID-19 period, the main trends of their behavior and vision of development were determined. Changes were detected in the product strategy. To increase the effectiveness of communication policy, a focus should be on enhanced communications with consumers, especially through the implementation of a content-plan for publications on Facebook and Instagram, including facts from the lives of actors or filmmaking process, uniting followers around the filming theme, interacting, etc. Based on the above, the proposals are made to strengthen communication policy: activating posting frequency, generating more interesting content, and focusing on engaging with the followers. It turned out that such changes affect the key quality efficiency of social media marketing in two cinema chains. Such events rebuild the online community of moviegoers, which fosters loyalty and increases in visitors in the post-pandemic period. In this context, the implementation of online cinema in cooperation with distributors will contribute to formatting an online platform aimed at attracting a larger number of consumers, regardless of external circumstances. © Svitlana Melnychenko, Anatolii Mazaraki, Nadiya Vedmid, Alla Okhrimenko, Alona Shtanova, 2021.

People’s threat perceptions inform their coping strategies. However, no prior research explicitly addresses threat perceptions of fake news or how people cope with it. To address this pertinent res...

Online communities bring together participants from diverse backgrounds and often face challenges in aggregating their opinions. We infer lessons from the experience of individual contributors to Wikipedia articles about U.S. politics. We identify two factors that cause a tendency toward moderation in collective opinion: Either biased contributors contribute less, which shifts the composition of participants, or biased contributors moderate their own views. Our findings show that shifts in the composition of participants account for 80%–90% of the moderation in content. Contributors tend to contribute to articles with slants that are opposite their own views. Evidence suggests that encountering extreme contributors with an opposite slant plays an important role in triggering the composition shift and changing views. These findings suggest that collective intelligence becomes more trustworthy when mechanisms encourage confrontation between distinct viewpoints. They also suggest, cautiously, that managers who aspire to produce content “from all sides” should let the most biased contributors leave the collective conversation if they can be replaced with more moderate voices. This paper was accepted by Anandhi Bharadwaj, information systems.

PurposeFacebook community leaders, often nonprofessionals who make a personal decision to create and manage online spaces, are becoming key players on social media sites. Using the theoretical framework of the uses and gratifications theory, this paper reveals the motivations of these individuals who are responsible for the community's information flow, limits and members' well-being. While some studies have begun acknowledging community leaders' important role in the social media, very little is known about their motivations for creating and leading the communities, often voluntarily.Design/methodology/approachUsing both quantitative and qualitative analyses, data were collected through a survey of 94 Facebook community leaders about their motivations for creating and leading their communities.FindingsThe content analysis of the open-ended question reveals that leaders are motivated to create communities to satisfy informational needs, social needs and individual interests. A factor analysis shows five distinct motivations for leading: social, personal, influence, efficacy and community goals. Finally, a hierarchical regression indicates that extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, time spent per day and being the creator of the community can predict the level of motivation to lead the Facebook community.Originality/valueAs more and more organizations use online communities, the findings of this study may provide insights into leaders' motivations that can help organizations select their community leaders. This study expands on current research about a popular communication tool, Facebook communities, by examining it within the context of the unique role of online leadership in the social media environment.

The Social Identity Model of Recovery (SIMOR) suggests that addiction recovery is a journey through time where membership in various groups facilitates success. With the help of computational approaches, we now have access to new resources to study whether a wide variety of different online communities can be part of the addiction recovery journey. In this work, we study the effects of two main social factors on recovery success: first, multiple group membership defined in terms of richness of online community engagement; second, active participation operationalized as the evenness in engagement with these groups. We then model recovery from addiction by applying the extended Cox regression model which accounts for the effect of these two factors on time to relapse. We applied our analysis to a dataset of 457 recovering opioid addicts that self-announced the date of their recovery, indicating that at least 219 (48%) addicts relapsed during the recovery period. We find that multiple group membership - in terms of the number of other forums that a subject had posted in - as well as active participation - in terms of how evenly their posts were spread amongst the different forums - reduced the risk of relapse. We discuss our findings with regards to the opportunity, but also risk, that online group membership poses for recovering opioid addicts, as well as the possible contribution that computational social science methods can make to the study of addiction and recovery.

Over the past several years, an online community of self-described "incels," referring to involuntary celibates, has emerged and gained increased public attention. Central to the guiding incel ideology and master narrative are violent misogynistic beliefs and an attitude of entitlement, based on male gender and social positioning, with respect to obtaining desired and often illusory sexual experiences. While violence and hate speech within the incel community are both common, there exists a notable subset of incels who have been willing to act on those violent beliefs through the commission of acts of multiple murder. This study explores the demographic, cognitive, and other characteristics of seven self-identified incels who have attempted and/or successfully completed homicide. The findings suggest that although self-perceptions tend to reflect either grandiosity or self-deprecation, homicidal incels share similar demographic characteristics and dense common clusters of neutralization techniques, cognitive distortions, and criminal thinking errors.

Pandemic outbreaks in student and teaching society have changed seriously. Now, with the influence of COVID19 infection fear, students have dramatically changed their orientational approach. Purposefully, University students aimed at connecting the virtual community for learning, interact, exchange information, and share knowledge. Numerous researched has examined the significant effects of the virtual community, although the present study aims to investigate the collective's e-satisfaction with the student e-learning environment at the university level as regards virtual community interaction, technology fitness, and compatibility. The study attempts to investigate the useful component for strengthening digital learning e-satisfaction by SEM modelling. This study focused on students from universities who take part in UG, PG and PhD programs from various parts of Indian higher education institution or universities. A total 384 number of responses were collected from the above academic intuitions. The study disclosed the importance of virtual community interaction, compatibility, and technology fit to measure e-satisfaction.

Networking within online communities is recognized as a new way of social interaction. The authors study Russian Internet communities that unite members of the same profession – professional social...

Established in 1999, Eksi Sozluk, the largest (and oldest) urban dictionary in Turkey, has consistently managed to retain its popularity with the online audience. It has a unique peer-production model for organizing cultural knowledge about everyday life in Turkish society. Although online communities were initially theorized as autonomous and libertarian spaces, they have turned into reflections of the societies in which they exist today. This transformation is perhaps best reflected in gender relations within online communities. Toxic masculinity and patriarchal practices commonplace in everyday life not only poison the fabric of online communities but also disrupt the dynamics of peer-produced cultural knowledge. Using the netnographic method, this study examines gender relations in the Eksi Sozluk online community. The most striking aspect of our findings is that some of the male community members persistently abuse Eksi Sozluk’s peer production mechanisms, turning them into a means of harassing female users. Our findings suggest that the mechanisms that organize collaborative cultural activities have become in practice tools reinforcing male cultural hegemony in the community.

Online communities provide spaces for people who are vulnerable and underserved to seek support and build community, such as LGBTQ+ people. Today, some online community spaces are mediated by algorithms. Scholarship has found that algorithms have become deeply embedded in the systems that mediate our routine engagements with the world. Yet, little is known about how these systems impact those who are most vulnerable in society. In this paper, we focus on people's everyday experiences with one algorithmic system, the short video sharing application TikTok. TikTok recently received press that it was suppressing and oppressing the identities of its growing LGBTQ+ user population through algorithmic and human moderation of LGBTQ+ creators and content related to LGBTQ+ identity. Through an interview study with 16 LGBTQ+ TikTok users, we explore people's everyday engagements and encounters with the platform. We find that TikTok's For You Page algorithm constructs contradictory identity spaces that at once support LGBTQ+ identity work and reaffirm LGBTQ+ identity, while also transgressing and violating the identities of individual users. We also find that people are developing self-organized practices in response to these transgressions and violations. We discuss the implications of algorithmic systems on people's identity work, and introduce the concept of algorithmic exclusion, and explore how people are building resilience following moments of algorithmic exclusion.

Almost all of the existing approaches to determining online local community are typically deliberated like-minded users who have similar topical interests. However, such methodologies overlook the prospective temporality of users’ interests as well as users’ degree of topical activeness. As a result, the consequential communities might have extremely lower active users. This research investigates how online social users’ behaviors and topical activeness vary over time and how these parameters can be employed in order to improve the quality of the detected local community. For a given input query, consisting a query node (user) and a set of attributes, this research intends to find densely-connected community in which community members are temporally similar in terms of their activities related to the query attributes. To address the proposed problem, we develop a temporal activity biased weight model which gives higher weight to users’ recent activities and develop an algorithm to search an effective community. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is justified using four benchmark datasets and compared with four other baseline methods. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed framework yields better outcomes than the baseline methods for all four benchmark datasets.

Background Due to recent treatment advances, people who have non–small cell lung cancer with oncogenic alterations are an important new group of cancer survivors. Little is known about lung cancer online support communities. This research was guided by two primary questions: (1) How do these lung cancer survivors engage in online support communities? and (2) What are the psychological, social, and physical impacts of such engagement? Methods Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with patients with advanced lung cancer (N = 40) to learn about their experiences with the illness. We used qualitative thematic analysis, inductive and deductive, as outlined by Carspecken. We adapted the framework for studying online communities developed by Zhang and colleagues to examine engagement with and impacts of involvement in online lung cancer support communities. Results Participants described engaging in the online community through (1) initializing communication through asking questions or sharing resources, (2) responding to others comments or inquiries, or (3) simply observing/reading others posts. Participation had physical, psychological, or social impacts, with benefits (e.g., empowerment) and risks (e.g., feelings of jealousy or misinformation) in each domain. Participants used various strategies to mitigate negative impacts, such as distancing oneself as needed. Conclusions Online lung cancer support communities provide support, camaraderie, and specialized health information. However, there are also risks of online engagement, such as social comparison or accessing misinformation. Understanding the utility of online support communities for lung cancer survivors on targeted therapies and further addressing their risks are urgent tasks, especially in the post-COVID era.

With the emergence and rapid proliferation of social media platforms and social networking sites, recent years have witnessed a surge of misinformation spreading in our daily life. Drawing on a large-scale dataset which covers more than 1.4M posts and 18M comments, we investigate the propagation of two distinct narratives--(i) conspiracy information, whose claims are generally unsubstantiated and thus referred as misinformation to some extent, and (ii) scientific information, whose origins are generally readily identifiable and verifiable--in an online social media platform. We find that conspiracy cascades tend to propagate in a multigenerational branching process while science cascades are more likely to grow in a breadth-first manner. Specifically, conspiracy information triggers larger cascades, involves more users and generations, persists longer, is more viral and bursty than science information. Content analysis reveals that conspiracy cascades contain more negative words and emotional words which convey anger, fear, disgust, surprise and trust. We also find that conspiracy cascades are more concerned with political and controversial topics. After applying machine learning models, we achieve an AUC score of nearly 90% in discriminating conspiracy from science narratives. We find that conspiracy cascades are more likely to be controlled by a broader set of users than science cascades, imposing new challenges on the management of misinformation. Although political affinity is thought to affect the consumption of misinformation, there is very little evidence that political orientation of the information source plays a role during the propagation of conspiracy information. Our study provides complementing evidence to current misinformation research and has practical policy implications to stem the propagation and mitigate the influence of misinformation online., Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables

The aim of this paper is to outline and critically analyse the ethical dilemmas faced by criminologists tasked with online community research. Online communities and online content serve as a valuable sources of criminological knowledge about online crime and deviance as well as formal and informal norm-making and means of social control. From discussion forum texts and blogs to multimedia posts in open and closed social networking groups, from visual and video materials on Instagram, Youtube, or Tiktok to organized crime group data exchanges in publicly inaccessible communication channels, there is great diversity and variety of the contents and forms of online communication enacted by online communities. Correspondingly, research projects are different – some focusing on the content as a linguistic object, others focusing on social relations, social network structure, and its ethnographic characteristics, while many fall in between. In addition, depending on the research goals and sensitivity of the research questions, researchers may opt for active interaction or passive (and sometimes covert) observation. Therefore there is no one-size-fits-all ethical solution for approaching online communities in criminology. Based on an in-depth analysis of methodological literature, the paper suggests that online community research is largely a matter of situational ethics, wherein researchers must make situation-aware ethical decisions about several key issues. In particular, they should aim to choose and provide arguments regarding: 1) expectations of publicity or privacy in publicly accessible information; 2) the need for informed consent or absence of such need; 3) ensuring balance between anonymity and authorship attribution; 4) securing collected data; and 5) correctly assessing risks to the researched individuals and communities, and the researchers themselves.

This paper describes an innovative approach combining a content analysis of commentary and images on a Facebook page with a thematic analysis of the subjective experience expressed in interviews of those impacted by the text and images. Interview participants were asked about their perceptions of the representation of the muscularity-focused identity on social media, including the specific Facebook page. Content analysis of the Facebook page comments showed that very muscular male images attracted predominantly negative feedback from the public, a trend supported by the interview participants. Thematic analysis of the interviews indicated that a negative social media representation and commentary can affect young men's self-esteem and increase body concern. Some men represented on the Page found it humorous, which could serve as a form of bonding for the muscularity-focused online community. Other young men acknowledged how harmful such negative feedback can be on their self-evaluations and body image, consistent with the sociocultural framework whereby negative representations can lead to increased body dissatisfaction.

The Styberg Library has offered support to the LGBTQ+ community in a variety of ways. This work stemmed from larger seminary commitments and statements which served as an impetus for the work. As an institution affiliated with the United Methodist Church, we recognized how the current impasse in the denomination had affected our community. In response, we offered ourselves as a place of affirmation and support. First, we curated several displays to highlight relevant resources and services that may be of interest to the queer community. We also created an LGBTQ+ LibGuide to highlight library resources/services and online community resources. Then, we began the process of constructing an archive to document the history of the seminary’s LGBTQ+ community after realizing our archive lacked these documents. We continue to explore further ways to extend support. This poster highlighted various aspects of this work.

The article deals with the peculiarities of communicative politeness in the poorly investigated sphere of Russian-language communication focusing specifically on online groups. The purpose of the article is to identify the ways and means used in this environment for the organization of polite communication. A distinctive feature of the author’s research approach is the analysis of etiquette in the context of a dialogue, which means not only the analysis of the rules of stimulus, but also the rules of reaction, which corresponds to the systematic approach as a general principle of media linguistics (as a research method). The article defines speech etiquette as a system of norms and rules of polite speech behavior, the observance of which ensures the existence of the online community. The study allows us to conclude that the communicative tactics of etiquette in online groups are as follows: a) the participant’s inclusion into the community is regulated; b) bans on some forms of speech behavior are established and sanctions for violations of bans are imposed; c) high communicative status is provided to the author in different ways and freedom for creative self-expression is guaranteed to each participant; d) on the one hand, the establishment of contacts with a partner suitable in one or another parameter is stimulated, on the other hand, the degree of the partners’ proximity is regulated in accordance with the wish of its initiator; e) the opportunity to give/receive a response to a particular activity of the communication initiator is provided. These setups are implemented via a variety of resources, including both technical and speech means of address and response. Netiquette, drawings and images help to ensure emotional comfort. An adequate communicative distance is supported by abbreviations used in speech and understood only by the group members, by creating an adequate balance in the use of elevated and low stylistic means, in the use of methods creating a comic effect. Following speech etiquette rules is promoted by a kind of communication sanitation, which is carried out by the group administrator and the participants themselves. Participants use a metatext, which demonstrates the reflection of the group participants’ speech activity. The existing rules in online communities are aimed at making communication emotionally comfortable, ensuring easy navigation, neutralization of aggression, and prevention of speech crimes, encouraging the users to demonstrate courtesy and display attention to one another.

Members of an online community peer-produce digital artifacts by negotiating different perspectives and personal knowledge bases. These negotiations are manifested in the temporal evolution of the peer-produced artifact. In this study, we conceptualize the evolution of a digital artifact as a trajectory in a feature space. Our theoretical frame suggests that, through negotiations, contributors’ actions “pull” the trajectory and shape its movement in the feature space. We hypothesize that the type of contributors that work on a focal article influences the extent to which that article’s trajectory explores alternative positions within that space, and that the trajectory’s exploration is, in turn, associated with the artifact’s quality. To test these hypotheses, we analyzed the trajectories of wiki articles drawn from two peer-production communities, Wikipedia and Wikia, tracking the evolution of 242 paired articles for over a decade during which the articles went through 536,745 revisions. We found that the contributors who are the most likely to increase the trajectory’s exploration are those that (1) return to work on the focal artifact and (2) are unregistered members in the broader online community. Further, our results show that the trajectory’s exploration has a curvilinear association with article quality, indicating that exploration contributes positively to quality, but that the effect is reversed when exploration exceeds a certain level. The insights derived from this study highlight the value of an artifact-centric approach to increasing our understanding of the dynamics underlying peer-production.

This letter argues that data of strategic individuals with heterogeneous privacy valuations in a distributed online social network (e.g., Facebook) will be under-priced, if traded in a monopoly buyer setting, and will lead to diminishing utilitarian welfare. This result, for a certain family of online community data trading problems, is in stark contrast to a popular information economics intuition that increased amounts of end-user data signals in a data market improves its efficiency. Our proposed theory paves the way for a future (counter-intuitive) analysis of data trading oligopoly markets for online social networks (OSNs).

This study investigates English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' perceptions of the causal relationships among teaching, social, and cognitive presences, indicative of a community of inquiry in online EFL course. Their relationships to demographic variables are also explored. There has been a growing interest in using the community of inquiry framework to explore the existence of teaching, social, and cognitive presences as indicative of the quality of online educational experience. The causal relationships among the three presences and whether demographic variables such as gender and program of study predict these presences have not received considerable attention. To examine the relationships among the three presences, the Community of Inquiry (COI) survey instrument was administered to 737 learners of EFL. Factor analysis was performed, and the findings confirmed the factor structure of the COI. In addition, structural equation modelling and Chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) analyses confirmed the hypothesized causal relationships among the three presences. Results revealed that teaching presence was the core factor in sustaining an online community of inquiry and gender significantly predicted perceptions of teaching presence. Implications for research on online language teaching, policy, and practice are discussed. Â https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.19.11.12

Due to various social advancements, Bangladesh has become more welcoming to digital technologies. Thus, a significant online community is flourishing here. Almost half of the country’s entire population uses the internet. The digital neighborhood is becoming larger the mediated interaction. What we now call online is nothing but a reflection of offline except its physicality. Like other social phenomena, religion and religious discourse is also a part of cyber society. Belief in cyberspace is often dubbed as “cyber-religion”. Debates on religion often harm the opposite group and contend faiths transform peace into communal animosity beyond cyberspace. Thus, society gets heated by hostile collective performances. In contemporary Bangladesh, online piety is an exclusive phenomenon that has considerable importance. By observing the dynamics of online religiosity, this paper focusing more on social media tries to present a concise overview of digital Islam(ism) and the social psychology of online Islamic piety in the context of Bangladesh.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the structural relationships between a sense of virtual community (SOVC), community satisfaction, community involvement, community commitment and alternative attractiveness in the online fan community context.Design/methodology/approachThis study gathered and empirically analyzed data from 277 members of the online Super Junior fan community with frequency, reliability, confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM) with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 20.0 and AMOS 24.0.FindingsThe findings of SEM indicated that community satisfaction was significantly influenced by the four dimensions of SOVC, while community involvement was significantly affected by membership and fulfillment of needs. Also, community commitment and alternative attractiveness were significantly impacted by community satisfaction and community involvement. Lastly, privacy concern moderated the paths from influence to community satisfaction and from community satisfaction to community commitment, respectively.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study should help online fan community administrators to reduce members' perception of alternative attractiveness (other fan communities) and to understand how privacy concern influences members' attitudes toward the online community.Originality/valueIn light of the findings, a greater understanding of the determinants of community commitment and alternative attractiveness along with privacy concern is critical in retaining virtual fan communities' members over the long-term.

Within online communities, social norms that both set expectations for and regulate behavior can be vital to the overall welfare of the community--particularly in the context of the privacy and safety of its members. For communities where the cost of regulatory failure can be high, it is important to understand both the conditions under which norms might be effective, and when they might fail. As a case study, we consider transformative fandom, a creative community dedicated to reimagining existing media in often subversive ways. In part due to the marginalized status of many members, there are strong, longstanding norms to protect the community. Through an interview study with 25 fandom participants, we investigate social norms that have been largely effective over time at maintaining member privacy and safety, but also break down under certain circumstances. Catalysts for these breakdowns include tensions between sub-communities and an increasing presence of outsiders, though most prominently, we identify a disconnect between the norms the community needs to support and the design of the platforms they occupy.

Creative workers frequently turn to online critique communities for feedback on their work. While past research has focused primarily on how to yield better feedback from providers, less is known about the strategies feedback seekers use to engage providers and request feedback. We present two studies to explore the feedback exchange dynamics between feedback requesters and providers in the subreddit community, r/design\_critiques. In Study 1, we interviewed 12 community members and found that while creators have strategies to request feedback, they expressed uncertainty about whether and how to include details about the design context, personal background, and specific feedback needs. In Study 2, through a mixed-method analysis, we identified how specific request strategies impact the quantity and quality of community feedback, and found several key, but undervalued strategies: signaling as a novice, critiquing one's own design, and providing design variants. These strategies led to better community response, but were rarely used. We offer design implications around how to leverage these insights to improve online feedback exchange

Online communities are playing a critical role in social communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. We reviewed 25,795 online comments from Reddit, a popular social-media website with a subsection...

A negative comment on a corporate social media post can pierce like an arrow to the chest and puncture holes into an organization’s walls. A single negative voice in a sea of positive feedback can feel as though it is blaring from a giant bullhorn, striking fear into corporate community managers that an avalanche of negativity will overtake positivity like a contagious bandwagon. Why would a corporation consider telling its story in the online battlefield of social media and risk exposing its reputation to a cesspool of negativity? This paper will explore why negativity is an online barrier through research, industry advice and best practices – including from the researchers and experts who use the foregoing colourful idioms and metaphors to describe negative online comments. To answer the main question of why an organization would consider engaging on social media in the face of prolific negativity and hate speech, this paper will review the evolution of online emotions and the rise of negativity on social media. The paper will define negative online comments in the corporate context using research on trolls, cyberbullying and online personal attacks. Using the psychology of Pareto’s 80/20 rule and negativity bias, this paper will provide quantitative and qualitative perspectives on negativity to show why companies pay much more attention to negative comments than positive ones, and how analysis of negativity can help a company develop emotional intelligence. Examples will be presented from research and industry to understand and combat negativity and review research on user comments that classifies users to better understand their motivations. Using research on tone and voice in online conversation, this paper will share cautionary case studies that demonstrate how companies that are not self-aware can incite negative comments. Finally, this paper will review research on platform content moderation techniques to understand how social media platforms like Facebook manage negativity and will suggest similar solutions for corporations, including not only the online community’s ability but also our collective responsibility to moderate and overcome the online positivity deficit. Keywords: social media, community manager, online negativity, negativity bias, negative comments, online emotions, user categorization

We present a study of the online forum Reddit, specifically a sub-forum for (typically heterosexual) men who identify as involuntary celibates or incels. Incels are an online imagined community/community of practice who wish to, but do not, have sexual relations with women. Owing to this identity, they view themselves as non-normative within broader society and see women and societal standards of masculinity as the cause of their problems. In this paper, we take a small corpus of 67,000 words generated from 50 threads created, and commented on, by incels. We analyse keywords, word frequencies, and concordance lines to explore the representation of gendered social actors. Keyword analysis reveals that references to gendered social actors are particularly salient within this community, leading to an analysis of all such social actors in the corpus. The findings suggest that incels position different groups of men in a hierarchy in which conventionally attractive men occupy the top position. Notably, we find that female social actors are not placed in a similar hierarchy. An additional appraisal analysis of the most frequently occurring male and female social actors shows that men are judged as incapacitated while women are seen as immoral, dishonest and capable of hurting men. Members of the online community also seem preoccupied with physical attractiveness. The study opens up a number of avenues for future research, especially into the complexities with which members of non-normative heterosexual groups simultaneously orient to and reject social norms.

This paper gives a comprehensive account of a humorous practice on the IncelTears subreddit, whose aim is to poke fun at, and give a social commentary on, the notorious online community of incels (hateful involuntary celibate men). Based on a representative corpus, the predominant categories of user-generated multimodal items are teased out relative to their form and stance. The central characteristics and socio-pragmatic aims of these humorous practices are discussed, together with the ideological meanings they communicate. Apart from disparaging and critiquing what they consider to be indicative of the pernicious incel ideology, the subreddit community members derive pleasure from the humorous items and forge solidarity links. Overall, this study offers valid conclusions about the (dis)affiliative and informative functions of creative humour on social media represented by the subreddit which humorously addresses a socially relevant, serious problem.

Recently, Western European countries are gaining popularity in families who, of course, do not want to have children, but these trends are also penetrating Ukrainian society. However, families who were deliberately unwilling to have children in Ukraine were not studied.The purpose of the study is to identify the essential characteristics of socio-cultural phenomenon of families whodeliberately do not want to have children as an object of public policy.The article found that childless families who do not want to give birth to children are able to bear offspring but have a strong position of freedom from children. According to the findings of current researchers, the following schemes have been identified for families who do not want to have children: men who do not wish to have children on average have a lower level of income and education than women; there are far more women in the online community who do not want children than men. This is because women are more likely to talk about ending their careers; men who do not want to have children more than women because men perceive children from a more rational point of view; men with higher incomes have more children, while higher personal income for women is associated with fewer children or none at all.It is concluded that the public’s attitude towards families who do not want to have children is controversial. For example, part of society compares voluntarily childless families with a dangerous phenomenon. There are citizens who not only give up children but also demand that the authorities improve the lives of those who knowingly abandon children. They create a network of restaurants, movie theaters and sports clubs, where entry of children is strictly forbidden.According to the author of the article, such a situation will inevitably lead to a threat to the socio-cultural values and national integrity of the state. The danger is that Europe’s main antagonists, the Arab and Asian countries, are encouraging large families, thereby provoking large-scale expansion of migrants from eastern countries to Europe. Ukraine is considered to be a rule of law that guarantees «non-interference with privacy and family life, except in cases provided for in the Constitution» (Article 32). Therefore, voluntarily childless families have the right to live, as each family has the right to decide independently whether to increase their family or not, regardless of social assessment.

This study aims to build on the understanding of social commerce in the emerging markets and how it influences online community engagement. The conceptual model was proposed using theories including the social support theory, the trust theory, the social presence theory, the flow theory and the service-dominant logic theory. Using Facebook online community, the data were collected from 400 respondents from Jordan and analysed using AMOS based structural equation modelling. Results revealed that social commerce constructs positively influence social support, community members’ trust and social presence. Furthermore, it was found that social support and social presence positively affect community members’ trust. We also found that community members’ trust positively influence flow whereas both community members’ trust and flow positively influence community engagement.

Recruitment has changed over the years. Organisations have started searching for an easy and cost effective platform for personality mining. With the explosion of social networking sites, candidates are now able to choose where they could spend their time online. This has encouraged many recruiters to start using social networking as part of a new cost-conscious approach to personality mining. Social networking websites function like an online community of internet users. Popular online sites include LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. They are growing at an exponential rate, with most of the sites being free to join and, importantly, giving organizations an effective means of attracting today's Generation Y workforce. The purpose of this article is to contribute to emerging theory about the role of social networking sites in the process of personality mining.