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Conflict and identity shape shifting in an online financial community
Abstract
This paper challenges traditional explorations of online communities that have relied upon assumptions of trust and social cohesion. In the analysis presented here, conflict becomes more than just dysfunctional communication and
provides an alternative set of unifying principles and rationales for understanding social interaction and identity shape shifting within an online community. A model
is advanced that describes the systematic techniques of hostility and aggression in technologically enabled communities that take the form of contemporary tribalism.
It is argued that this tribe-like conflict embodies important rituals essential for maintaining and defining the contradictory social roles sometimes found in online
environments. This research offers a critical interpretive perspective that focuses on the link between identity shape shifting behaviours and the power relations within an online financial community. The analysis reveals how conflict between positions of power can help to align the values and ideals of an online community. With this study we seek to motivate a re-examination of the design and governance of online communities.
... Table 2 identifies the archetypal figures observed in marketing literature, and presents concisely their defining and brand related characteristics. We are therefore able to observe that certain kinds of qualities and roles of the archetypes could lead to the community's harmony (Seraj, 2012), while others could cause disruption (Campbell et al., 2009;Woodside et al., 2008). ...
... Curiosity Inquisitive Initiative Speculative (Campbell et al., 2009;Seraj, 2012) Everyman/ Everywoman Represented by the working-class common person; Values equality and democracy; consensus builder, and realistic; usually candid and sometimes fatalistic; often selfdeprecating. ...
... Jung (1990) explains the trickster/jester archetype as being unpredictable, possessing traits of deceits, engaging in tricks and actions of defraud. In modern archetype literature, trickster is defined as an untrustworthy person, a prankster who makes fun or causing annoyances (Campbell et al., 2009;Woodside et al., 2008). In the context of online consumer community that is of interest to us, trickster/jester is understood as a member who tries to influence or manipulate other members by creating annoyance within the community (Seraj, 2012). ...
Online consumer communities relying on peer rather than company shared information, invite polyphony, and often conflict during the re-negotiation of brand exchanged meanings. This paper explores consumers’ archetypal assumed roles during such conversations. Drawing on consumer devotion literature, it sets out to discover i) which archetypes emerge during online conflicts, ii) what are their characteristics and behavioural patterns, iii) what is their role in conflict resolution. Our study adopts the Multimodal Discourse-Mythological Approach and examines consumer disagreement concerning Samsung and Huawei’s competing claims of innovativeness. Our findings identify three archetypes that of the devotee, realist, and adversary. These newly proposed archetypes are further discussed with regards to their role in initiating, amplifying and resolving online conflicts. The study concludes by outlining theoretical and practical implications, along with propositions for future research.
... Investment is itself a social activity where people often make decisions collectively. Consequently, online financial communities can be educational forums where novices access and share expert investment tips, tutorials and pre-purchase information (Berger and Messerschmidt, 2009;Campbell et al., 2009). Through online forums people can develop far-flung communities that assemble and disperse quickly, while allowing everyday citizens to break public silence through debate on multiple sites, invoking the notion of the 'town hall' (Weger and Aakhus, 2003). ...
... Online communities are also sites of power, where conflict is rife (Campbell et al., 2009). Members adopt specific roles, attacking or defending standpoints. ...
... Deceptive, manipulative behaviours are readily observable, while dishonest participants use multiple messages or identities for personal gain. Such cycles of conflict help sustain online financial communities, since power struggles can enhance the quality of information available (Campbell et al., 2009;Weick, 1995). Online financial communities can also be spaces of resilience and resistance, with social and political edge. ...
Online communities are popular sites for collective sensemaking. This study explores sensemaking in one such community following the closure of Olint Corp, a highly successful Jamaican investment club. After Olint’s disbanding, Jamaicans reconnected through online communities to make sense of their financial losses, to make sense of Olint – seen variously as an altruistic endeavour, a global currency trader, or Ponzi scheme – and to make sense of themselves as enterprising investors. This narrative inquiry unveils their rich, multi-voiced, fragmented storying of Olint and its founder, once praised as a ‘financial messiah’.
... We analyse socio-organisational complexity in terms of interacting project stakeholders and their conflicts. Conflict is relatively well studied phenomena outside of IS (Wall and Callister 1995;De Dreu and Weingart 2003;Korsgaard, Soyoung Jeong et al. 2008) and conflicts are increasingly becoming the object of study within the IS discipline (Robey and Farrow 1982;Robey, Farrow et al. 1989;; Barki and Hartwick 1994;Miranda and Bostrom 1994;Kumar 1996;Symon, Long et al. 1996;Ahn and Skudlark 1997;Barki and Hartwick 2001;Chiasson and Dexter 2001;Sawyer 2001;Eschenfelder 2003;Cohen, Birkin et al. 2004;Paul, Samarah et al. 2005;Wong 2005; Leidner and Kayworth 2006;Sherif, Zmud et al. 2006;Currie and Guah 2007;Kankanhalli, Tan et al. 2007; Lira, Ripoll et al. 2008;Campbell, Fletcher et al. 2009). We regard conflict as particularly worthy of study as quantitatively and qualitatively there are indications that it accounts for a significant proportion of variance in ISDP performance ; Barki and Hartwick 2001;Sawyer 2001;Cohen, Birkin et al. 2004;Wong 2005;Moeller and Zhang 2008). ...
... This interdependency normally arises due to a need or commitment to achieve a particular outcome (Locke, Smith et al. 1994;Priem, Harrison et al. 1995;Jehn 1997;Hayward and Boeker 1998;Janssen, Van De Vliert et al. 1999; Barki and Hartwick 2001;Eschenfelder 2003;Leidner and Kayworth 2006;Korsgaard, Soyoung Jeong et al. 2008). However it can also be in the form of social relations and even via an intermediary such as an information system (Campbell, Fletcher et al. 2009). ...
... Subjects of conflict: The subjects of conflict are the stakeholders that perceive an object of conflict. The stakeholders can be individuals (Rizzo, House et al. 1970;Netemeyer, Johnston et al. 1990;Tubre and Collins 2000), team/group members (Locke, Smith et al. 1994;Priem, Harrison et al. 1995;Amason and Sapienza 1997;Janssen, Van De Vliert et al. 1999;Jehn, Northcraft et al. 1999;Pelled, Eisenhardt et al. 1999; Barki and Hartwick 2001;Jehn and Mannix 2001;Sawyer 2001;Paul, Samarah et al. 2005;Kankanhalli, Tan et al. 2007;Korsgaard, Soyoung Jeong et al. 2008;Lira, Ripoll et al. 2008;Campbell, Fletcher et al. 2009;Jehn, Rispens et al. 2010) or groups (Hayward and Boeker 1998;Leidner and Kayworth 2006). ...
Short running title: Multi-level Conflict Model Acknowledgement of Research support: We thank the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) and the EPSRC (grant numbers EP/H042644/1 and EP/F001096/1) for funding the authors. We also thank our colleagues at the UK's Large-Scale Complex IT Systems Initiative (www.lscits.org) for their feedback and support. Abstract: Practitioners are typically aware that organisational complexity is important to IT project performance however they are unsure of exactly what it comprises and how they should take it into account in their decision-making. This paper contributes to addressing the 'what' question by taking a multi-level conflict approach to understanding the relationship between individuals, groups and IT project complexity -an area in the literature so far unexplored and thus the basis of this literature survey and theory development. We first assess existing studies of conflict using semantic analysis to identify the basic components of conflict. We consequently examine the relationship between these components. Lastly we formulate a multilevel model of the phenomena to relate conflict to IT Systems Development Project (ISDP) complexity. The resulting model of conflict in ISDPs suggests that conflicts can occur at three different the levels: individual; intra-group; and inter-group. And that the following can be the objects of conflict: tasks, processes, relationships, roles, time, resources, capabilities, values, status, distributive justice, procedural justice. This approach is interesting as the types of characteristics identified by using insights from applied psychology and management are at a granularity that enables practitioners to get a handle on aspects of socio-organisational complexity and thus opens up action research as an approach to studying ISDP complexity.
... Conflict 1 is often conflated with toxicity and can sometimes lead to abusive user behavior, but not all conflict or negative interactions are or will become toxic [3,5]. Social conflict and tribalism develop for various reasons irrespective of user perceptions of harassment [2,8]. Since some form of conflict in peer-production communities is necessary to stimulate discussion, some tension is important to the community culture. ...
... We propose developing a "Handbook for Intelligent System Design" that gathers effective strategies from past community case studies across different domains, in addition to findings from cultural evolution [6,11], psychology [4,5], sociology [2,7,12], and human-computer interaction [1,3,8]. We suggest the following framework (see Fig. 1) as a foundation for evaluating cultural norms and interactions in peer-production communities. ...
Toxicity and abuse are common in online peer-production communities. The social structure of peer-production communities that aim to produce accurate and trustworthy information require some conflict and gate-keeping to spur content production and curation. However, conflict and gate-keeping often devolve into hierarchical power structures which punish newcomers and lock out marginalized groups through entrenched cultural norms. Community administrators often focus on content quality, rather than consideration for all user safety, to promote community growth and survival. Once toxic cultural norms dominate a peer-production community, it is very difficult for community administrators to stop these behaviors from undermining inclusive peer-production. We propose developing a "handbook of intelligent system design" that attempts to frame design protocols to better read user-community culture and accurately distinguish toxic negative interactions from beneficial conflict.
... Lastly, there is one interesting article challenging the traditional assumption that the presence of trust and cohesion are always desirable in virtual groups. The study of Campbell and colleagues demonstrated how conflict between positions of power in online communities can generate positive outcomes by helping align values and ideals of their members (Campbell et al., 2009). ...
... Cheng et al. (2016) × ***Note:Campbell et al. (2009) assessed if the absence of trust in online financial communities has a critical effect on the team functioning, therefore, no formal trust model was used. JISTEM USP, Brazil Vol. 19, 2022, e202219006 *****Note:Dubé & Robey (2009) have used a qualitative exploratory approach to map paradoxes in virtual teams and have not defined a formal trust model a priori. ...
The issue of trust development amongst members of virtual teams is gaining increasing attention from Information Systems (IS) scholars due to the advancement of virtual collaboration in organizations. The objective of this study is to evaluate the issue of trust development in virtual team research from the perspective of main IS journals, and to consolidate the contributions made by IS researchers. To this aim, a systematic review of the literature has been conducted, supported by bibliometric and Social Network Analysis (SNA). An IS-centric review of trust concepts and research paradigms has been presented along with opportunities for future research.
... Conflict in computer mediated communication environments, including large-scale virtual environments, has been explored in detail since the dawn of the World Wide Web (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009;Hardaker, 2013a;Hardaker, 2013b;Smith, 1999). There have been many attempts to find ways to increase participation and sense of community in these environments, especially where there is community dimension to them (Bishop, 2007b;de Souza & Preece, 2004;Nonnecke, Andrews, & Preece, 2006). ...
... Some have suggested character theories (Bartle, 1996;Bishop, 2008;Campbell et al., 2009), and others have tried to identify the behaviours specific to such environments (Hardaker, 2013a;Powazek, 2002;Preece, Nonnecke, & Andrews, 2004;Wallace, 1999). On their own, these offer little value, but this study seeks to make use of a way of understanding personality that conceptualises behaviour by people focuses on friendship and socialising as empathic and behaviour focused around individuality and ideas as autistic (Bishop, 2013;Bishop, 2015b;Bolognini, 1997). ...
The proliferation of media-rich social networking services has changed the way people use information society and audio-visual media services. Existing theories of cognition in human-computer interaction have limitations in dealing with the unique problems that exist in contemporary virtual environments. The presence of significant numbers of people using these at the same time causes behavioural issues not previously envisaged at the time of multi-user domains (MUDs) or the first massively-multiplayer online role-playing games. To understand such large-scale virtual environments, this chapter makes use of data generated from questionnaires, usability testing, and social and web metrics to assess the relevance of ecological cognition theory for the current age. Through making use of a biometric measure called ‘knol', the chapter suggests a new framework for measuring emotion and cognition in these and future environments.
... It is possible to conceptualise participants in multi-user environments through media theory and seduction theory. Such media theory includes character theories on fairy-tales (Propp, 1968), dramatic forms (Goffman, 1959) and most recently online community characters (Bishop, 2008;Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009). Such seduction theories include approaches like the mystery method (Von Markovik, 2007) and SESH approach (Mbakwe & Cunliffe, 2002;Mbakwe & Cunliffe, 2003;Mbakwe & Cunliffe, 2007) as well as narrative theories of online communities (Bishop, 2012a). ...
... There have been a number of attempts to capture the differences in personality among those who participate in online communities and other forms of large-scale virtual environment. Some have suggested Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a suitable approach (Del Grosso, 2001;Kim, 2000;Shneiderman, 2002), some have suggested character theories (Bartle, 1996;Bishop, 2008;Campbell et al., 2009), and others have tried to identify the behaviours specific to such environments (Hardaker, 2013a;Powazek, 2002;Preece, Nonnecke, & Andrews, 2004;Wallace, 1999). ...
The term large-scale virtual environment (LSVE) is not in the common usage. One might find discussion on massively multi-user online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and multi-user virtual environment (MUVEs), but these are sub-types of LSVEs and usually focus on the graphical element, not measuring the capacity of the individual users and the computation of their combined potential, nor the analysis of how they interact with one another to achieve mutual or opposite goals that affect the usage of data and their own nutritional resources. By investigating different user groups, internal and external representations and various thresholds, including the serendipity threshold, this chapter contributes to the understanding of how digital addiction manifests through a brain measurement called knol, which can be used as a floating-point unit.
... The research has covered a range of themes such as the individuals within communities and their roles, motivations, and contributions (e.g., Fayard and DeSanctis 2008;Phang et al. 2015;Wasko and Faraj 2005); the mechanisms that bind OCs and their underlying governance structures (e.g., Silva et al. 2009); and, how they create value (e.g., Barrett et al. 2016). The breadth of communities examined in the IS field has spanned the spectrum of domains and interests from health, politics and finance to entertainment (e.g., Barrett et al. 2016;Campbell et al. 2009;Garg et al. 2011). Alongside this, the literature has identified the challenges and opportunities around studying OCs and the new forms of data they provide (e.g., Jones 1997;Vaast and Walsham 2013). ...
... Users will also leave an OC when they expect that the community's future discussions will not align with their own interests (Butler et al. 2014). By contrast, psychological bonds, strong identity, trust, and social cohesion discourage switching and encourage staying (Bateman et al. 2011;Campbell et al. 2009). However, studies under this theme are based on voluntary switching and staying behavior and neglect involuntary dimensions of displacement and movement. ...
... The current ethnographic practices in IS research represents a diversified characteristic in case of the selection of research topics. For example, Campbell, Fletcher and Greenhill (2009) studied conflict in an online financial community, Kvasny, Trauth and Morgan (2009) ascertained how the intersection of sex, race and class identities shape the experiences of black female IT workers and learners in the United States of America (USA), Ribes and Finholt (2009) identified participants formulation of problems in their daily work of developing four United States (US) einfrastructure, Leonardi (2011Leonardi ( , 2012) studied a major automaker in the USA, and Ravishankar, Pan and Myers (2013) determined how Indian IT services vendor organizations experience and respond to power asymmetries in their relationships with western client organizations. ...
... Ethnographic method itself can take various forms based on the nature, scope and context of the research work. Some of the variations that are used by IS researchers comprises of confessional ethnography (Schultze, 2000), critical ethnography (Myers, 1997), postmodern ethnography (Harvey, 1997), virtual ethnography (Fay, 2007), and netnography (Campbell, Fletcher and Greenhill, 2009). Schultze (2000) used confessional genre to study her own informing activities and those of other knowledge workers with the intent of challenging readers to examine their own informing practices. ...
This is a course assignment.
... Due to the complexity of an individual's decision-making in the financial sector (Assadi & Ashta, 2014) and the demonstrated power of financial opinion-leaders in the past (Andrews & Boyle, 2008;Van Dolen, Dabholkar, & de Ruyter, 2007), a positive relationship is likely to be found in financial online communities as well. In their netnographic study on an Australian online financial community, Campbell, Fletcher and Greenhill (2009) specifically highlight the power of directive leadership and thereby support similar qualitative findings from Chua, Wareham and Robey (2007) for online trading communities. It is thus hypothesised that: ...
... Yet, previous suggestions in relation to the positive effect of directive leadership on financial groupthink (e.g. Campbell et al., 2009;Chua et al., 2007) were not confirmed. It can be speculated that trust in opinion-leaders and experts has decreased since the financial crises of the past decade (Yum, Lee, & Chae, 2012;Zhang & Liu, 2012), and that implicit directive leadership styles based on subtle, non-verbal means of persuasion are less likely to be 22 conveyed online (Van Dolen et al., 2007). ...
Online communities have witnessed an ongoing interest from both digital practitioners and scholars alike. Whilst the motives for and outcomes of customers? participation have been convincingly evidenced, there is a lack of conceptual and empirical understanding on the decision-making processes within virtual groups. This study employs Janis? (1972) Groupthink theory to investigate customers? tendency to conform when making decisions in a financial online community. Based on a sample of 343 respondents and multiple regression analysis, it is shown that perceived stress and group insulation have a positive influence upon groupthink, whilst group cohesion has a negative effect. The findings support the applicability of Groupthink theory in an online context and emphasise defective social decision-making processes in online communities as key priority for future research. Digital marketers gain insight on strategies to manage their customers? conformity-seeking tendencies and to prevent dysfunctional decision-making processes.
... Recent ethnographic work in IS shows considerable variety in the topics chosen. For example, Campbell et al. (2009) used ethnographic research to study conflict in an online financial community. They suggest that conflict, in contrast to trust and social cohesion, can provide an alternative set of unifying principles and rationales for understanding social interaction. ...
... As well as variety in the topics chosen, IS researchers have used various kinds of ethnographic research. Some of those that have been used by IS scholars include confessional ethnography (Schultze, 2000), critical ethnography (Myers, 1997), postmodern ethnography (Harvey, 1997) and netnography (Campbell et al., 2009). Schultze's (2000) article is a good example of confessional ethnography. ...
Until recently, most ethnographic research in information systems has been based on the traditional anthropological model of ethnography. In this traditional model of ethnography, one of the most important data-gathering techniques is participant observation. The ethnographer observes and participates but does not actively seek to change the situation. In recent years, however, a new type of ethnographic research has emerged – one that can be called design ethnography. Design ethnography is where the researcher goes beyond observation and actively engages with people in the field. Our view is that design ethnography has much potential for research in information systems. It is a new form of engaged scholarship that bridges the gap between ethnographic research and design science research.
... Several processes and mechanisms of online occupational communities have been investigated in previous work. Examples are governance mechanisms (O'Mahony & Ferraro, 2007), identity formation and change (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009), innovative capabilities (Di Gangi & Wasko, 2009;Füller, Jawecki, & Muhlbacher, 2007), knowledge sharing (Chiu, Hsu, & Wang, 2006), intellectual property systems (Fauchart & von Hippel, 2008), shared interest (Campbell et al., 2009;Nambisan, 2002;Parameswaran & Whinston, 2007), the interaction and communication between members (Lee, Vogel, & Limayem, 2002;Miller, Fabian, & Lin, 2009), or outcomes thereof, such as entrepreneurship (Frederiksen, Dahlander, & Autio, 2008;Shah & Tripsas, 2007), innovation (Füller et al., 2007), or health care (Sonet & Brody, 2007). Also, as can be seen form Table 1.1, individuals' motivations have regularly been the subject of scientific attention. ...
... Several processes and mechanisms of online occupational communities have been investigated in previous work. Examples are governance mechanisms (O'Mahony & Ferraro, 2007), identity formation and change (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009), innovative capabilities (Di Gangi & Wasko, 2009;Füller, Jawecki, & Muhlbacher, 2007), knowledge sharing (Chiu, Hsu, & Wang, 2006), intellectual property systems (Fauchart & von Hippel, 2008), shared interest (Campbell et al., 2009;Nambisan, 2002;Parameswaran & Whinston, 2007), the interaction and communication between members (Lee, Vogel, & Limayem, 2002;Miller, Fabian, & Lin, 2009), or outcomes thereof, such as entrepreneurship (Frederiksen, Dahlander, & Autio, 2008;Shah & Tripsas, 2007), innovation (Füller et al., 2007), or health care (Sonet & Brody, 2007). Also, as can be seen form Table 1.1, individuals' motivations have regularly been the subject of scientific attention. ...
... Ethnography in IS is also associated with various "mature subgenres" (Sarker et al., 2018a). These include critical ethnography (Myers, 1997a), postmodern ethnography (Harvey, 1997), confessional ethnography (Schultze 2000), and virtual ethnography (Hine, 2000), otherwise known as netnography (Campbell et al., 2009). Recently, Baskerville and Myers (2015) advocate for "a new type of ethnography" called design ethnography. ...
Freelisting is a widely-used ethnographic data elicitation and analysis technique that can help researchers quickly and systematically collect and quantify qualitative cultural data. The paper discusses the value of freelisting for IS researchers who conduct qualitative and/or quantitative research. Specifically, the paper provides an overview of freelisting, examines how prior research has used freelisting, gives step-by-step instructions about how to collect, analyze, and present freelist data, and describes the benefits of freelisting in the context of IS research. The following items are explained in detail: (1) how to understand when freelisting can be an appropriate choice; (2) the different types of freelists; (3) how to focus freelists on a specific phenomenon; (4) how to analyze freelists; and (5) how to triangulate freelist data. Additionally, the paper details seven ways IS researchers can benefit from using freelisting, which include: (1) creating culturally salient surveys; (2) revisiting or generating new field-specific theories; (3) enhancing a mixed-method research design; (4) uncovering information about cultural similarities and differences in intracultural and cross-cultural research designs; (5) consciously considering the importance of context; (6) developing more robust quantitative analysis techniques; and (7) eliciting culturally relevant data about development or refinement of technology in applied settings.
... The online community literature suggests that compared with KA, KS may involve more tension and divergence between the members during the KS process [58,59]. Tension tends to be minimal during KA since multiple perspectives are often valued, and conflicts regarding changing existing knowledge contributions do not tend to exist. ...
Understanding how to enhance online leadership in online Q&A communities is important because an online leader plays a role model or knowledge coordinator who can strengthen member commitment in the community. Considering the essential role of communication in establishing leadership, this study aims to understand how the linguistic complexity of two types of knowledge contribution, i.e., knowledge adding (KA) versus knowledge shaping (KS) that are targeted at two types of audience, may influence leadership in online Q&A communities. By analyzing the posting history of members from StackExchange, a massive network of online Q&A communities, our findings suggest that among the three linguistic complexity dimensions, readability and lexical diversity of KA have more positive impacts on online leadership than those of KS. However, the sentiment of KS has a more positive impact than the sentiment of KA. This study contributes to the online leadership research by highlighting the importance of adjusting linguistic styles based on types of communication behaviors (i.e., KA and KS) to earn leadership.
... China(Wu et al., 2013) (4) Australia(Campbell et al., 2009) (5) Italy (Rinallo and Pitardi, 2019) (6) Cross-countries (USA, African)(Ferguson and Taminiau, 2014) ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study sets out to examine (1) how have conflicts been conceptualized and operationalized within the context of online consumption communities? (2) what are the main conflict management, resolution strategies and frameworks that have been identified? and (3) what are the gaps in the relevant body of work in terms of theoretical and methodological dimensions, and what implications do they have for future research.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a systematic and multidisciplinary literature review of online conflicts. Following a descriptive and thematic content analysis, it examines 79 peer-reviewed scholarly articles of the past 20 years within 6 scientific databases.
Findings
The authors propose a literature-based conceptualization of online conflicts and a multi-level conflict resolution matrix based on the different governance structures and social control mechanisms investigated in extant research.
Originality/value
The originality of this study lies in the integrative and interdisciplinary view of online conflict in global consumption communities.
... Such analyses are useful, especially when for whatever reason the participation in an online community or its observation could be difficult for the researcher. For instance, interesting research can be done in the online financial communities (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009). However, without detailed knowledge of finances and high speed trading it will be difficult to conduct online observations (Preda, 2017). ...
Accepting ethic norms involves naturalization of beliefs, assuming them as unalterable truths. Social sciences have been inscribed with certain standards for years. In the last twenty-five years, the practice of having research projects approved by ethics committees has become institutionalized, in some cases leading to extreme bureaucracy and changing the character of the issue, shifting the weight from the personal moral obligation of the researcher and an issue that requires high flexibility and individualism towards a set of forms to be filled out, pseudo-warrants of the safety of the research subjects. However, Internet research has opened the eyes of the sociologists to new problems and caused reconsideration of some issues of research ethics. This chapter discusses key notions of research ethics in the digital studies context. It shows how internet can be a source of infamy, and warns against improper use of data. It positions the fundamental rules of anonymity, privacy, informed consent, data ownership, as well as data confidentiality in the context of digital social studies.
... Such analyses are useful, especially when for whatever reason the participation in an online community or its observation could be difficult for the researcher. For instance, interesting research can be done in the online financial communities (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009). However, without detailed knowledge of finances and high speed trading it will be difficult to conduct online observations (Preda, 2017). ...
The chapter presents the idea of Thick Big Data, a methodological approach combining big data sets with thick, ethnographic analysis. It presents different quantitative methods, including Google Correlate, social network analysis (SNA), online polls, culturomics, and data scraping, as well as easy tools to start working with online data. It describes the key differences in performing qualitative studies online, by focusing on the example of digital ethnography. It helps using case studies for digital communities as well. It gives specific guidance on conducting interviews online, and describes how to perform narrative analysis of digital culture. It concludes with describing methods of studying online cultural production, and discusses the notions of remix culture, memes, and trolling.
... Such analyses are useful, especially when for whatever reason the participation in an online community or its observation could be difficult for the researcher. For instance, interesting research can be done in the online financial communities (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009). However, without detailed knowledge of finances and high speed trading it will be difficult to conduct online observations (Preda, 2017). ...
This chapter discusses three major changes resulting from the emerging communication technologies. It addresses the new forms of shaping relations online. Friendships, intimacy, the rise of weak ties, as well as an increased fluidity of relations are discussed. Next, the chapter addresses the demise of expert knowledge. Starting with McDonaldization of higher education and the rise of anti-intellectual sentiments, the chapter addresses the new trends in democratizing knowledge. While recognizing highly positive aspects of the turn, such as citizen science, Wikipedia, or free/open source movement, it also addresses the darker and more troubling processes, such as anti-scientific sentiments, pseudotheories, and the takeover of knowledge production and distribution by quacks. Finally, the chapter focuses on sharing economy. By problematizing the “sharing” premise, as well as by showing the impact of the ongoing change reaching far beyond economy itself, the chapter introduces the notion of collaborative society, as better covering the social change we witness.
... Such analyses are useful, especially when for whatever reason the participation in an online community or its observation could be difficult for the researcher. For instance, interesting research can be done in the online financial communities (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009). However, without detailed knowledge of finances and high speed trading it will be difficult to conduct online observations (Preda, 2017). ...
The social sciences are becoming datafied. The questions that have been considered the domain of sociologists, now are answered by data scientists, operating on large datasets, and breaking with the methodological tradition for better or worse. The traditional social sciences, such as sociology or anthropology, are thus under the double threat of becoming marginalized or even irrelevant; both because of the new methods of research, which require more computational skills, and because of the increasing competition from the corporate world, which gains an additional advantage based on data access. However, sociologists and anthropologists still have some important assets, too. Unlike data scientists, they have a long history of doing qualitative research. The more quantified datasets we have, the more difficult it is to interpret them without adding layers of qualitative interpretation. Big Data needs Thick Data. This book presents the available arsenal of new tools for studying the society quantitatively, but also show the new methods of analysis from the qualitative side and encourages their combination. In shows that Big Data can and should be supplemented and interpreted through thick data , as well as cultural analysis, in a novel approach of Thick Big Data.The book is critically important for students and researchers in the social sciences to understand the possibilities of digital analysis, both in the quantitative and qualitative area, and successfully build mixed-methods approaches.
... The students also voice criticism about managerial issues (Bell et al. 2016). Other studies focus on forums within political (Thakur 2012;Karlsson 2011;Brysk 2013), business (Campbell, Fletcher and Greenhill 2009), professional (Yuksel and Tozun 2013) and informal recreational contexts (Arde´ vol, Nu´ n˜ ez and Vayreda 2006). ...
This paper explores academics’ interaction in an online forum, where perceptions of racism are debated. The communicative model of democratic discourse directs the interpretation of an emancipatory discursive interaction, following a deductive textual analysis of the forum and interview texts from selected participants. The communicative model discourages normative judgements of others and focuses on an understanding of difference. The findings indicate that participants who engage in a deliberative demonstration of power, do not appreciate diverse social-historical contexts. Discursive interactions which indicate an understanding of participants’ contexts are marked by a mitigating and sympathetic approach which allows for doubt in the judgements of participants. These mitigating interactions do however not persuade all participants to critically reflect on limiting opinions, attitudes and ways of interaction. An online curator who invites participants from diverse contexts might make the discourse more nuanced, create the opportunity to understand multiple realities and facilitate a transformative discussion.
... Tego rodzaju analizy przydają się zwłaszcza wtedy, gdy z róż nych względów uczestnictwo w społeczności on-line lub jej obserwacja mogłyby być dla badacza czy badaczki trudne. Przykładowo, ciekawe badania można przeprowadzić w społeczności internetowej świata finansów ( Campbell, Fletcher, Greenhill, 2009). zawodów "będzie świadczyć o równouprawnieniu kobiet w zakresie wykonywania zawodów i piastowania funkcji". ...
Fragment książki "Socjologia internetu", stanowiącej wprowadzenie do cyfrowych metod badań społecznych, zarówno ilościowych (Big Data, SNA - analiza sieci, kwestionariusze, kulturomika), jak i jakościowych (etnografia, wywiad, storytelling, narracje) i kulturowych (analiza wizualna i treści) z dodatkiem na temat etyki badawczej w badaniach internetu.
... Arazy et al. [27] examined role-transitions within Wikipedia specifically, where they categorized users into four-types of role changes, which sheds light on the fact that user behavior is indeed active and dynamic. Similarly, Campbell, Fletcher, and Greenhill [39] explore users changing roles within communities, however, they focus more specifically on conflict between roles within communities. We extend this work by finding social roles in two online communities (Study One: community A and B) and by examining these roles over time (Study Two: community A). ...
Online communities are virtual spaces for users to share interests, support others, and to exchange knowledge and information. Understanding user behavior is valuable to organizations and has applications from marketing to security, for instance, identifying leaders within a community or predicting future behavior. In the present research, we seek to understand the various roles that users adopt in online communities–for instance, who leads the conversation? Who are the supporters? We examine user role changes over time and the pathways that users follow. This allows us to explore the differences between users who progress to leadership positions and users who fail to develop influence. We also reflect on how user role proportions impact the overall health of the community. Here, we examine two online ideological communities, RevLeft and Islamic Awakening (N = 1631; N = 849), and provide a novel approach to identify various types of users. Finally, we study user role trajectories over time and identify community “leaders” from meta-data alone. Study One examined both communities using K-MEANS cluster analysis of behavioral meta-data, which revealed seven user roles. We then mapped these roles against Preece and Schneiderman’s (2009) Reader-to-Leader Framework (RtLF). Both communities aligned with the RtLF, where most users were “contributors”, many were “collaborators”, and few were “leaders”. Study Two looked at one community over a two-year period and found that, despite a high churn rate of users, roles were stable over time. We built a model of user role transitions over the two years. This can be used to predict user role changes in the future, which will have implications for community managers and security focused contexts (e.g., analyzing behavioral meta-data from forums and websites known to be associated with illicit activity).
... A list of the main types of Lolcow are in Table 1. The Big Man, Ripper and Chatroom Bob were identified early in the 20th century (Bishop, 2009b;Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009), but the Look The Teacher Is Coming Jakob, or LTTIC Jacob, was introduced in this chapter to describe a new type of Lolcow that has come about because of social media channels like YouTube where anyone can pass themselves off as authoritative. It is a combination of the well-known Internet and SMS acronym LTTIC and the first name of Jakob Nielsen, a self-described usability guru who has kept a blog since 1995 where he has stated his opinion as absolute fact as he sees it. ...
This chapter carries out two investigations into digital addiction using the brain productivity measure of knol. It is asserted that digital addiction is caused by two medical conditions linked to the well-known concept of flow and lesser known concept of involvement. These conditions are serotonergic-dopaminergic asynchronicity (SDA) and glutamine inhibition and glutamate acceleration (GIGA). In online environments SDA affects befriending, defriending and kudos and GIGA affects workfulness and smart-device overuse to produce increased wakefulness, causing conditions like Circadian rhythm sleep disorder. In other words, if a person is over-stimulated or under-stimulated, their use of digital technologies, such as at night, will increase. The results show improved sleep and reduced device use during the night when the L-Glutamine is consumed, but effects the following day were not always positive. L-5-Hydroxytryptophan had some effect in reducing ‘mental gaze' caused by glutamate and dopamine, but could not be seen as effective as an SSRI.
... W ramach tego ostatniego podejścia można badać bardzo różne rzeczy -w szczególności trzy główne odrębne obszary (Hine 2000;Miller i Slater 2001;Jeran 2004 Badanie ludzi podczas korzystania z Internetu jest szczególnie użyteczne, kiedy mamy do czynienia ze społecznościami, w których bariera wejścia jest bardzo wysoka w zakresie niezbędnej wiedzy. Przykładowo, analiza forów internetowych maklerów giełdowych czy fi nansistów, bez odpowiednich kompetencji z zakresu fi nansów, będzie bardzo trudna (Campbell, Fletcher i Greenhill 2009), podobnie rzecz się ma choćby w społecznościach hackerów (Coleman 2014;Zaród 2017). Rzecz jasna, w progu wejścia nie musi bynajmniej chodzić o specyfi kę kultury zawodowej i wiedzy profesjonalnej (Jemielniak 2005), bo może nim być choćby dogłębna znajomość kreskówki My Little Pony, jak jest w przypadku społeczności "bronies", czyli dorosłych mężczyzn, którzy fascynują się tym serialem dla dzieci (Ellis 2015). ...
Celem artykułu jest pokazanie, że badania z zakresu socjologii cyfrowej są ważnym uzupełnieniem większości projektów badań społecznych oraz wprowadzenie systematyzacji pojęciowej. Omawiam różnice znaczeniowe i kategoryzacyjne pojęć. Przedstawiam podstawowe zalety badań ilościowych i Big Data, argumentując, że pełne ich wykorzystanie jest możliwe przede wszystkim dzięki uzupełnieniu badań ilościowych o thick data pochodzące z pogłębionych badań jakościowych. Postuluję, że dostęp do Big Data w większym stopniu wymusza umiejętną triangulację metodyczną i stosowanie etnografi i cyfrowej. Twierdzę również, że socjologia w niedalekiej przyszłości będzie musiała nie tylko uwzględniać badania społeczności internetowych w niemal każdym projekcie badawczym, oraz nie tylko wchłonąć znaczną część warsztatu badawczego z zakresu analizy danych rozwiniętego w naukach ścisłych, ale także wypracować metody łączenia Big Data z etnografią cyfrową.
... According to him, there are 'achievers', 'explorers', 'socializers' and 'killers' that are characters in a game (Bartle, 1996). In another theory developed for online communities (Campbell, Fletcher and Greenhill, 2009) types are presented as 'the big man', 'the sorcerer' and 'the trickster'. From this point forth, we can state that similar character classifications could be done for films. ...
... aditional fairytales provides useful guidance to define the types of character roles that individuals assume in different situations. Propp's work is also usefully extended further in the area of media character theory where archetypical roles are described in relation to contemporary situations including participation in online forums and groups (Campbell et al 2009). With a workable buyer persona developed your complex organisation can now consistently address and engage with a specific target for your attentions. However, this process is not at an end. Your buyer persona should also be part of a continuous process of refinement and evolution. ...
This book takes a practical and strategic outlook to digital marketing with an easy to follow step-by-step approach. Each chapter has several business case studies that help give insights into real-world issues and scenarios, which can be used by both academic and business readers.’ - Joanne Kuzma, Principal Lecturer in Computing, University of Worcester, UK
‘This book is a great resource for both students and businesses. The case studies are fresh and topical and the latest findings from research are woven into this very stimulating text. Digital marketing is examined from a strategic and a practical perspective with both authority and creativity.’ - Kate Dobson, Lecturer Consultant, University of Worcester, UK
'Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach is a wonderful book that really communicates great concepts and practical techniques for helping companies and students understand how to approach digital commerce and transformation. Heinze, Fletcher, Rashid and Cruz nailed it with the "Marketing first" approach.' - Carla Dawson, Co-Founder of onmarc.com
... Another type of trolling is done by a type of poster called a 'Big Man.' This troller type takes part in trolling to puff themselves up by speaking in an authoritive way to assume the role as expert on a particular topic (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009). They are often targets of other members of the group, especially Snerts, who often feel the Big Men think they are superior to them, even if they don't. ...
Internet trolling describes the posting of any content on the Internet which is provocative or offensive, which is different from the original meaning online in the 1990s, referring to the posting of messages for humourous effect. Those systems operators (sysops) who run online communities are being targeted because of abuse posted on their platforms. Political discussion groups are some of the most prone to trolling, whether consensual or unwanted. Many such websites ara open for anyone to join, meaning when some members post messages they know are offensive but legal, others might find grossly offensive, meaning these messages could be illegal. This paper develops a questionnaire called the This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Scale (TIWWCHNT-20), which aims to help sysops better plan the development of online communities to take account of different users' capacity to be offended, and for users to self-assess whether they will be suited to an online community. The scale is discussed in relation to different Internet posting techniques where different users will act differently.
... Another type of trolling is done by a type of poster called a 'Big Man.' This troller type takes part in trolling to puff themselves up by speaking in an authoritive way to assume the role as expert on a particular topic (Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009). They are often targets of other members of the group, especially Snerts, who often feel the Big Men think they are superior to them, even if they don't. ...
Internet trolling describe the posting of any content on the Internet which is provocative or offensive, which is different from the original meaning online in the 1990s, referring to the posting of messages for humourous effect. Those systems operators (sysops) who run online communities are being targeted because of abuse posted on their platforms. Political discussion groups are some of the most prone to trolling, whether consensual or unwanted. Many such websites ara open for anyone to join, meaning when some members post messages they know are offensive but legal, others might find grossly offensive, meaning these messages could be illegal. This paper develops a questionnaire called the This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Scale (TIWWCHNT-20), which aims to help sysops better plan the development of online communities to take account of different users' capacity to be offended, and for users to self-assess whether they will be suited to an online community. The scale is discussed in relation to different Internet posting techniques where different users will act differently.
... As technology changes the way we interact socially, it becomes ever more difficult to discern whether an email from our bank is authentic, and how much we can trust the authorities with our online privacy. This threat of deception has been shown to be substantial in various domains and manifests in many ways, such as phishing and "spear phishing" attacks (Fuller et al., 2012;Wright & Marett, 2010), deception in online employment recruitment (Allen et al., 2007), deception in electronic commerce (Pennington et al., 2004;Wang & Benbasat, 2007;Xiao & Benbasat, 2010), deceptive opinions in online reviews (Fusilier et al., 2015;Ott et al., 2012), deception in professional virtual communities (Joinson & Dietz-Uhler, 2002), deception in group support systems (George et al., 2008), deception in social media relationships (Hancock et al., 2007;Hancock et al., 2010;Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011;, deception at workplace (da Cunha et al., 2015), fake news (Conroy et al., 2015), and deception as a result of multiple identities created in online communities (Campbell et al., 2009). The negative consequences of successful deception range from harmless inconveniences to significant costs. ...
The increasing social reliance on computer-mediated communication has resulted in the rise of deceptive communication. Gender is a salient feature of identity that can be easily disguised online, and yet the phenomenon of gender deception has not been fully investigated. This study adopts a multifactorial analysis to examine motivation, self-efficacy and gender of a deceiver in relation to self-efficacy and gender of the detector as a contribution to understanding online gender deception. An asynchronous online game was developed to simulate scenarios in which males were incentivized to speak like females, and females were incentivized to speak like males. Using path analysis, we analyzed cognitive factors of gender deception, to support our hypotheses that an actor’s actual gender can affect the motivation to deceive; males had higher self-efficacy beliefs in gender deception, and females had a higher success rate in detecting such deception. Our research suggests that the gender of the message recipient could be a significant factor in uncovering gender deception.
... However, threading does not correspond to the way natural human conversations take place in the real world. Threaded comments risk to break up the dia- logue into a bunch of private conversations instead of an ongoing, open discussion, which leads to a more confrontational debating style [11,33]. ...
Argumentative debates are a powerful tool for reaching agreements in open environments. However, in large scale settings, such as social networks, making sense of ongoing debates may be a compelling task, and debates risk to lose their effectiveness. We thus propose "microdebates" to help organizing and confronting users' opinions in an automated way.
... These design proposals are meant to facilitate the emotional engagement or embodiment of participants and to overcome the typical problems associated with the building of persona, such as the inequality among participants to express themselves adequately within the textual confinements and the lack of visibility and accessibility of their online history. Discourse analysis of online identity have brought about themes such as identity formation, multiple identities, role playing, self-disclosure, social relationships, gender and embodiment in virtual space (Matsuda (2002); Campbell, Fletcher and Greenhill (2009); Ess (2012); Taylor (1999); Turkle (1995;2005;; DePalma and Atkinson (2007); Van Doorn (2011); Merchant (2006); Grabill and Pigg (2012); Herring et al. (2002); McGee and Brisco (2003)). This article contributes to the discourse on identity formation within the specific context of an online forum for employees of a university. ...
The researchers construct the identity of participants by analysing online and offline identity performances in a virtual forum of a higher education institution in South Africa. The study identifies several interactional and cyclic elements that inform the articulation of discursive identity. Being directed by Iris Marion Young's theory of communicative action, the interactional character of the different elements of identity formation are valued to be enhancing or debilitating moral discourse. As the research concludes that embodied identities facilitate moral discourse, design elements for the online forum are proposed to enhance a critical understanding of own (un)emancipatory positions and the appreciation of others.
... Conflict in interorganizational relationships refers to the disagreements that occur in the cooperative relationship or the incompatibility of activities, shared resources, and goals between partners (Campbell et al., 2009). Dysfunctional conflict constitutes unhealthy behaviors, such as distorting information to harm other decision makers, interacting with each other with hostility and distrust, or forming barriers during the process of decision making (Ruekert and Walker, 1987). ...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to investigate how marketing capability, dysfunctional conflict, and relationship value affect relational benefits through the relational proclivity between suppliers and initiators in a group-buying web site.
Design/methodology/approach
– The initiators selected were those who conducted group buying more than ten times in the group-buying web site. In total, 9,000 invitation e-mails were sent to initiators, of which 389 were returned; the model and hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modeling.
Findings
– In online group buying, initiators can know about a new product only through the web site; the marketing capability of suppliers and the relationship value of initiators are positively associated with the relational proclivity between suppliers and initiators. And, the results indicate that the dysfunctional conflict of initiators is not positively associated with the relational proclivity between suppliers and initiators. Finally, The relational proclivity between suppliers and initiators is positively associated with the relational benefit between initiators and buyers.
Practical implications
– The supplier and the initiator can work together in brainstorming new products; moreover, initiators can assist suppliers by helping them identify buyers’ demands and giving them relevant feedback.
Social implications
– The suppliers’ marketing capability is important for initiators because it can help increase the latter’s ability to catch buyers’ attention. In addition, the initiator and supplier together can think about product innovation and new product designs.
Originality/value
– Initiators, as key persons in the group-buying process, serve as a bridge between suppliers and buyers and have a positive impact on group buying. The findings suggest that certain facets of initiators are helpful in explaining the expected product performance of buyers.
... Participants may also differ in their online interactions compared with offline settings (for examples, see Arsand, 2008;Campbell et al., 2009: Suler, 2002Waskul and Douglass, 1997). Some participants may feel bolder, more honest and more comfortable engaging in resistance online, whereas others may feel intimidated, shy and uncomfortable owing to the visibility that an online forum creates. ...
That leadership development is a contested terrain, like any organizational terrain, can scarcely be considered a new idea, yet research into the intricacies of resistance in this context is very much in its infancy. This article takes recent critical scholarship on resistance as its starting point to explore the interdependencies of power, resistance and struggle in a leadership development environment. Drawing on extensive online interactions collected from an 18-month, cross-sector programme with emergent leaders, this article asks whether the different stakeholders in leadership development could benefit from a more open exploration of power and resistance. Such dynamics offer new insights into the relationship between participants and facilitators and raise a series of alternative questions, challenges and strategies for leadership development.
... Another type of trolling is done by a type of poster called a 'Big Man.' This troller type takes part in trolling to puff themselves up by speaking in an authoritive way to assume the role as expert on a particular topic (Bishop, 2013b;Campbell, Fletcher, & Greenhill, 2009). They are often targets of other members of the group, especially Snerts, who often feel the Big Men think they are superior to them, even if they don't. ...
Internet trolling has become a popularly used term to describe the posting of any content on the Internet which is provocative or offensive. This is different from the original meaning online in the 1990s, which referred to the posting of provocative messages for humourous effect. Those systems operators (sysops) who run online communities are finding they are being targeted because of abuse posted on their platforms. Political discussion groups are some of the most prone to trolling, whether consensual or unwanted. Many such websites ara open for anyone to join, meaning when some members post messages they know are offensive but legal, others might find grossly offensive, meaning these messages could be illegal. This paper develops a questionnaire called the This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Scale (TIWWCHNT-20), which aims to help sysops better plan the development of online communities to take account of different users' capacity to be offended, and for users to self-assess whether they will be suited to an online community. The scale is discussed in relation to different Internet posting techniques where different users will act differently.
... There have been a number of character theories devised over the history of media formats.Propp (1968)presented a framework of characters that one would find in the typical folktale, which include a hero and a princess. Some have attempted to introduce minor advancements to understanding characters in online communities (Campbell et al., 2009), but a more comprehensive model can be found inBishop (2008), which was extended by Bishop (2012c) following the mass use of social networking for surveillance and escape, such as Facebook, by all generations when it was once the preserve of the Net Generation (Leung, 2003). This adapted model by Bishop (2012c) is presented inTable 1. ...
There is a general trend amongst mass media organisations around the world towards concentration of the visual, written and audio packaging and of newspapers, websites and television as channels of information. These platforms are explored in detail in this paper in relation to the moral panics around ‘internet trolling’. This paper discusses the history of trolling in the context of mass media, specifically ‘classical trolling’ and ‘Anonymous trolling’. A review of different media headlines finds that whether or not a story is portrayed in newspapers, online, or on television, the media will use a variety of ways to convey their messages. In the case of ‘trolls’, they show a darker, sinister and transgressive side of cyberspace in the form of abuse and vitriol (i.e., anonymous trolling). The paper concludes that future research should look in detail at the different character types of internet troller and how these affect the way so called ‘trolls’ are represented in the media and the effect this has on the attitude towards young internet users and trollers in general.
In this paper, we review and analyze two literatures on the construct of human trust in IT artifacts and in the entities that source, operate, and govern IT. The first literature review focuses on defining of the construct of trust across a range of disciplines. Our analysis of this literature identified 13 assumptions about the nature of trust. The assumptions illustrate the complexities of human trust. The second literature review focused on 214 empirical studies of the construct of trust published in the AIS Senior Scholars’ Basket of Eight journals. We analyze this literature to identify IS scholar’s most common assessments of trust from qualitative studies and most common measures of trust from quantitative studies. As a cumulative body of knowledge, IS scholars have deeply examined different types of trust. IS scholars have also extensively examined the assumption that trust is dynamic, as evidenced by the many qualitative papers that examined trust as a process, and trust in Web2 technologies, which are characterized by centralized applications and centralized governance. While the IS scholarly community has established a substantial tradition around the construct of trust, there is still interesting work to be done. With recent releases of open generative AI and with the rise of Web3 technologies like blockchains that purport to be “trustless”, the construct of trust in IT needs to be re-examined in these emerging contexts. We also encourage more research on trust in bi-directional relationships, on the limits of transitive trust, and on the construct of distrust.
This thesis investigates the practical and conceptual possibilities of implementing conflict mediation theory to reduce polarization or other conflict-inducing tendencies of (hybrid) collaborative filtering systems, particularly YouTube’s recommender system. It explores how professionals in conflict mediation can operationalize their work practices and expertise in an information filtering system. Then, it looks at previous literature that has scrutinized the recommender system for polarisation. Finally, it proposes two techniques -- contextualisation and bidirectional video recommendations -- as conflict mediation strategies formalisable in recommenders.
Trusted online identities in social media are viable sources of information in the digital world. Among different types of social media, blog continues to play important roles in promoting social commerce and social interactions through the development and maintenance of trusted online identities. This study examines factors that influence bloggers’ intentions to continue blogging. From the social identity perspective, we suggest that identity confirmation, reflecting the congruence between identity expectation and perceived identity performance in blogging, is a primary driver of blogging continuance intention. Integrating the social identity theory, the expectation-confirmation theory, and the literature on habit, we develop a model to show that identity confirmation influences satisfaction with blogging and habit of blogging, and the latter two factors influence continuance intention. An empirical test of 165 Taiwanese bloggers confirmed the expectations. A post hoc analysis further shows that the effect of identity confirmation on blogging continuance intention is mediated by satisfaction and habit, highlighting the critical role of bloggers’ ex-post experience in the linkage between their ex-ante motivation of identity construction and blogging continuance intention.
The proliferation of media rich social networking services, including Second Life, Amazon Prime Video, and services provided through Tobii Eye-Tracking, as well as Oculus, Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens headsets, has changed the way people use information society and audiovisual media services. Existing theories of cognition in human-computer interaction have limitations in dealing with the unique problems that exist in contemporary virtual environments. The presence of significant numbers of people using these at the same time causes behavioural issues not previously envisaged at the time of MultiUser Domains (MUDs) or the first Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORGs). To understand such large-scale virtual environments (LSVEs), this chapter makes use of data generated from questionnaires, usability testing and social and web metrics, to assess the relevance of ecological cognition theory for the current age. Through making use of a biometric measure called 'knol,' the paper suggests a new framework for measuring emotion and cognition in these and future environments, such as is possible with Oculus Rift and Tobii technologies.
Starting with an online financial community in South Korea, this article explores the simultaneous production of a new form of subjectivity and a networked ecosystem of financial cultures. Using a multi-sited ethnography to track the movements of users as they moved across different spaces, this article finds that users gifted financial information to each other, blended laity and expertise, and reappropriated financial communities into a third place defined as an informal, public place hosting sociable conversations. Through the grafting of prosocial activities (e.g. sharing, gifting, and social networking) onto financial self-management, users were shaped as networked financial subjects and exhibited a distinctive mode of selfhood informed by both financial subjectivity and neoliberal networked subjectivity. At the same time, their practices spawned countless social, convivial groups as well as entrepreneurial financial gurus. By demonstrating the complex webs of on- and off-line groups, programs, relationships, and social networks, this article illustrates how the networked ecosystem of financial cultures brought the markets and commons into coalescence.
Online communities of consumption (OCCs) represent highly diverse groups of consumers whose interests are not always aligned. Social control in OCCs aims to effectively manage problems arising from this heterogeneity. Extant literature on social control in OCCs is fragmented as some studies focus on the principles of social control, while others focus on the implementation. Moreover, the domain is undertheorized. This article integrates the disparate literature on social control in OCCs providing a first unified conceptualization of the topic. The authors conceptualize social control as a system, or configuration, of moderation practices. Moderation practices are executed during interactions operating under different governance structures (market, hierarchy, and clan) and serving different purposes (interaction initiation, maintenance, and termination). From this conceptualization, important areas of future research emerge and research questions are developed. The framework also serves as a community management tool for OCC managers, enabling the diagnosis of social control problems and the elaboration of strategies and tactics to address them.
While there are many possible approaches and areas of research for the study of social media, a review shows that only a few of these are used in extant information systems literature. The paper therefore suggests that increased awareness of the possibilities can strengthen research in social media. It is also suggested that information systems scholars can strengthen their interdisciplinary position by making the information systems discipline itself the home ground for research about social media. To address the issue of possible approaches and areas of research, the paper develops a framework that includes conceptual framing and methodology as well as research areas in the information systems discipline. First, the framework guides a review of extant literature about external social media. Going forward, the framework facilitates the development of a future research agenda about social media on information systems home ground.
Internet discussion sites have become an enduring feature of modern asset markets. While prior research demonstrated a strong link between communicative practices and market behaviour, more work is required to fully understand the processes that support knowledge co-creation in these environments. To address this gap, we propose a research project to (1) Identify the factors that drive communication and influence knowledge cocreation, (2) examine how systematic variations in these factors influence investment and trading decisions, and (3) develop a decision support system that combines communication analysis and "what-if" scenario modelling to forecast impacts on capital markets. The practical goals for this project are to help improve investor decisionmaking and assist regulators through better detection of market manipulation. John Campbell and Byron Keating
This study examines factors that influence bloggers' intentions to continue using blogs for self-expression. It points out that the construction and maintenance of online identities is a critical driving force of bloguse and continuance. Meanwhile, blogging satisfaction, perceived usefulness, enjoyment, and habit pose a positive impact on blog continuance while privacy concern poses a negative impact. Based on the Expectation-Confirmation Model of IT Continuance (ECM-IT), a research model is developed to examine the impacts of these factors on blogging continuance intentions. Implications of the study are discussed.
Online incentive mechanisms constitute a strategy to stimulate members to participate and perform tasks in virtual communities. Given the diversity of variables and particularities that define virtual communities and their contexts, it is a challenge to identify and define incentives that are adequate to a given community. Our focus is on providing a systematic way to help designers to reason and develop their own analysis. We propose a conceptual framework to support the analysis of virtual communities, aiming to facilitate the definition of online incentive mechanisms. The framework is presented as a canvas with issues to be addressed through a set of questions, offering a visual and understandable guide. We evaluated the framework with a case study. We found that the framework satisfactorily supports designers in defining more complete and effective online incentive mechanisms.
3D immersive virtual worlds, such as Second Life, have been the focus of substantial
attention from tertiary educators in recent years and the potential for the use of
such environments in learning and teaching contexts has been a frequent topic
of discussion by commentators on higher education futures. However, despite
anecdotal evidence of an increase in usage of such environments for learning and
teaching in Australian and New Zealand higher education, there have been no
published studies reporting on the breadth of use and the nature of the experience
of adopters of such environments across the sector.
This report draws on data from a review and environmental analysis of the use of 3D
immersive virtual worlds in higher education in Australia and New Zealand carried
out by researchers from Charles Sturt University (CSU), the University of New England
(UNE) and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) from 2010 to 2012. The
study sought to identify and examine existing applications of 3D immersive virtual
worlds by educators throughout the two countries, with the aim of developing an
understanding of how the technology is being used for learning and teaching across
institutions and disciplines and the relevant experiences of academics, educational
designers and Information Technology (IT) support staff.
The study has been carried out under the auspices of the Distance Education Hub
(DEHub at http://www.dehub.edu.au), a federally funded research consortium
based at UNE that involves UNE, CSU, USQ and Central Queensland University in
Australia and Massey University in New Zealand. The study set out to provide the
higher education community with exemplars, guidelines and recommendations to
encourage the successful uptake, implementation and use of 3D immersive virtual
worlds.
The scoping study consisted of three phases of data collection:
1. Literature searches and searches of institutional web sites leading to
the establishment of a database of 179 higher education staff (135 in
Australia and 44 in New Zealand) with an interest or involvement in using
3D immersive virtual worlds for learning and teaching;
2. An online questionnaire completed by 117 respondents, including 82 from
Australia and 35 from New Zealand, to obtain information about the ways in
which 3D immersive virtual worlds were used and about the perspectives of
the teaching staff involved;
3. Interviews to gather more detailed information and perspectives from
13 academic staff who had implemented virtual worlds in their teaching,
from six educational design staff and from five Information Technology (IT)
support staff.
The 62 respondents who indicated they had already used 3D immersive virtual worlds
in their teaching reported on a total of 125 individual subjects in which they had used
the technology, including 201 individual subject offerings. Details were provided
about the use of virtual worlds in 100 subjects. Of these, the majority used Second Life
(78.0%) as the virtual worlds platform, followed by Active Worlds (5.0%) and OpenSim
(4.0%). Within these 100 subjects, the virtual world-based tasks were compulsory
and assessed in 41% of subjects, compulsory but not assessed in 16% and neither
compulsory nor assessed in 43%.
There was a fairly even distribution of subjects using virtual worlds across disciplines,
although the science discipline was somewhat underrepresented. Specifically, 29%
were in the Arts and Humanities, 21% in Education, 18% in Information Technology,
10% in Legal and Business Studies, 9% in Health, 4% in Science and 9% in other
discipline areas. Respondents provided 53 detailed descriptions of the way in which
virtual worlds were used in their teaching, and from these descriptions ten categories
of learning design were identified, with a number of subjects fitting into more than
one category. The most commonly used virtual world supported learning design was
role-play (43% of subjects), followed by learning designs centred on communication
(40%), learning designs focussing on instruction or presentation (23%) and learning
designs focussing on place exploration and building/scripting (each 17%).
Fifty-five respondents provided more detailed information about a specific virtual world
implementation and, of these, 55% indicated that the virtual world, island or space
was developed specifically for the purpose of the subject they taught. Twenty-two per
cent of these 55 respondents indicated that an important aspect of the learning task
was familiarisation with Second Life and, consequently, these respondents indicated
that students were required to explore the environment as a whole, rather than using
a space developed for a specific pedagogical purpose. Of these 55 respondents, 55%
indicated that they had drawn on the support of non academic staff within their
institutions, such as information technology or educational design support staff. Fiftyfive
per cent also indicated that they had drawn upon dedicated funding to support
the implementation, with this funding coming from a variety of internal and external
sources.
Interview participants described a number of different virtual spaces that had been
developed to meet the specific needs of their particular learning context, including a virtual hospital emergency department, a virtual classroom and a simulated street with
retail outlets allowing students to undertake a business role-play. Others described
the development of spaces designed for various types of online teaching including
amphitheatres, boardrooms and informal student meeting spaces. Some of the spaces
developed consisted largely of static building and furniture, while others incorporated
dynamic features controlled by complex scripts; for example, one participant described
a virtual environment containing business outlets controlled by a complex back-end
economic simulation. Other spaces relied on user interface enhancement allowing
avatar control beyond that provided by default within the viewer software.
With respect to evaluation, little systematic evaluation was described in the interviews,
with participants mainly describing informal feedback mechanisms and some types of
formal but not systematic evaluation. Most commonly, participants described informal
student feedback or informal observation of student activity as the main evaluation
mechanisms. Formal evaluation procedures predominately included student subject
evaluation forms that were included as part of a university reporting system. Of those
that did mention systematic evaluation, most referred to research projects associated
with the virtual world implementation.
Respondents to the questionnaire mentioned a number of problems they had
encountered in their attempts to integrate virtual world activities into their teaching
and these problems were grouped into the following categories: technology, support,
funding and time, usability and familiarity, equity and ethics, inherent limitations of
virtual worlds, acceptance of virtual worlds, and management and planning. Interview
participants also provided more detailed descriptions of many of the problems
identified and a number of recommendations for others emerged from both the
questionnaire responses and interviews.
Other perspectives emerging from interviews included identification of a lack of
specific funding for, and an absence of, institutional policies relating to virtual
worlds, an acknowledgement of the need for substantial time commitment by staff
considering the adoption of virtual worlds and noting of the value of working with
others through informal and formal networks. Additionally, academic staff members
interviewed highlighted the increased engagement of students that had occurred
through the introduction of virtual worlds based tasks and the fact that the process
of introducing virtual worlds into their teaching had led to new reflections on their
teaching practice.
Based on the analysis of data collected during this study, along with ongoing reviews
of the emerging literature, a series of recommendations have been derived. These have
been grouped into recommendations relating to institutional policy, recommendations
directed at teaching staff considering the adoption of virtual worlds into their teaching
and recommendations relating to research.
Online communities of consumption (OCCs) represent highly diverse groups of consumers whose interests are not always aligned. Social control in OCCs aims to effectively manage problems arising from this heterogeneity. Extant literature on social control in OCCs is fragmented as some studies focus on the principles of social control, while others focus on the implementation. Moreover, the domain is undertheorized. This article integrates the disparate literature on social control in OCCs providing a first unified conceptualization of the topic. The authors conceptualize social control as a system, or configuration, of moderation practices. Moderation practices are executed during interactions operating under different governance structures (market, hierarchy, and clan) and serving different purposes (interaction initiation, maintenance, and termination). From this conceptualization, important areas of future research emerge and research questions are developed. The framework also serves as a community management tool for OCC managers, enabling the diagnosis of social control problems and the elaboration of strategies and tactics to address them.
When the word "cinema" is mentioned the first definition most commonly given is the sequence of pictures which reflects the emotions and moods of people in different circumstances in a certain time frame, composed of three main parts which are introduction progression and result. There is so much pain and sacrifice in production of this art. Today especially in developing countries, like Turkey, the art of cinema is still in a fragile,unprotected and extraordinary condition. In spite of these rough conditions there are some cinema labourers shining like stars in this art who are appreciated by people because of their remarkable effort. With their productions these actors and actreeses who have talent in character and typecasting acting which are also rare all around the world, are real inspirers to people that are keen to learn the history of cinema or willing to work directly in this art. In this study, the definition of character and typecasting acting, when they are created and how they are formed are considered. It is aimed to give hints to all people who are interested in Turkish cinema history by analysing one of the best examples of the character and typecasting actors in Turkish cinema history, Sadri Alışık and the characters which he created.
Research problem: Corporate websites have been the subject of several research endeavors, and most of the research has focused on usability and interactivity. Since the emergence of the term ${rm Web 2.0}$ , more websites have added social features to their base functionality, and this new type of interactivity has yet to be investigated. This study explores the research evolution in this field. Research questions: How has research on interactivity in corporate websites evolved? How can prior research be categorized? In each category, which of the research challenges has little or no research support? Literature review: Our approach to the topic is guided by four major streams of research—(1) the diffusion of innovations theory; (2) the technology, organization, and environment framework; (3) the institutional theory; and (4) the model from Iacovou ${rm et , al}$. The analysis of the evolution of corporate websites showed three common types of corporate websites classified by their purpose and interaction intensity. Corporate websites hereby often benefit from the inclusion of design principles and patterns induced by the term ${rm Web 2.0}$. While examining the characteristics of corporate websites, usability and interactivity were found to be most important with reference to positive user response. Therefore, we clarified the concept of web-based interaction and reviewed the research on consumer response. Methodology: To gain a deeper understanding of the evolution of research on the interactivity in corporate websites, our study conducted a systematic and exhaustive literature review in which we identified and categorized several research issues. We conducted a qualitative analysis of 166 articles and classified relevant contributions by research issue an- category. Results and conclusion: Among the identified research issues concerning interactivity that facilitates communication of the organization, only relationship management emerged as a dominant issue. Research issues concerning interactivity that facilitates e-commerce could be found most and they tend to focus on two main areas: decision support systems and recommendation agents on sales-oriented e-commerce websites and loyalty, satisfaction, and trust as key variables. Research issues concerning interactivity for interpersonal communication mainly focus on the user's individual motivation and successive behavior, and contain many different references to computer-mediated interaction and online communities. Research issues in the field of designing for interactivity discuss interface design questions and focus on numerous website characteristics and their impact. Given those issues, we make suggestions for future research that would explore the organizational behavior related to innovation diffusion on corporate websites.
While organizational scholars are increasingly interested in issues of identity, identity work, and identification, in-depth empirical studies analyzing the process of identity creation have lagged behind, particularly when such process is triggered by the digitization of a work environment. In this longitudinal case study, we take a social constructionist perspective to investigate the identity creation process of a group of librarians in charge of a new information commons library. We call attention to the dialectic forces underlying this process, emphasizing how the librarians' image, as reflected by the patrons, led the librarians to try multiple provisional identities, which were supported by liminal actions reminiscent of either “who they were” and/or “who they could be.” We also consider how technology was appropriated throughout this dynamic and suggest a technology identification process model that parallels the group identity creation process.
This meta-analysis examines the role of trust in marketing channels. First, the analysis of pairwise relationships involving trust indicates that trust, on average, exhibits a robust and strong relationship with other channel relationship constructs under a wide range of different conditions. Next, we explored systematic patterns of variation in the correlations. The results demonstrate that the use of experiments, samples drawn from multiple industries, and US data tend to produce larger effects than the use of field studies, samples drawn from a single industry, and European data respectively do. Various other methodological characteristics of studies did not have significant effects. Finally, we examined the role of trust in a nomological net, involving some of the most frequently studied antecedents and consequences of trust. We find that trust contributes to satisfaction and long-term orientation over and beyond the effects of economic outcomes of the relationship. Both trust and economic outcomes—not just one or the other—are conducive to relationship marketing success. q 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
This paper focuses on the importance of trust in business-to-consumer e-commerce. Divided into three sections the paper first asks the question of why trust is important to the development and implementation of e-commerce and suggests some of the areas where user trust is specifically important. The second offers a view of trust developed using sociological theory and interactionism and looks at how this can inform our understanding of e-commerce users. Finally, the paper suggests a number of nontechnical ways in which successful e-commerce retailers build trust and offer potential for further exploration.
Arguably, the most critical time frame for organizational participants to develop trust is at the beginning of their relationship. Using primarily a cognitive approach, we address factors and processes that enable two organizational parties to form relatively high trust initially. We propose a model of specific relationships among several trust-related constructs and two cognitive processes. The model helps explain the paradoxical finding of high initial trust levels in new organizational relationships.
Geographically distributed teams are increasingly prevalent in the workplace, and research on distributed teams is ever more available. Despite this increased attention, we still know surprisingly little about how the dynamics of distributed teams differ from those of their collocated counterparts and how existing models of teams apply to this new form of work. For example, although it has been argued that distributed as compared with collocated teams have more severe conflicts that fester longer and resist resolution, few comparative studies investigate dynamics such as conflict in both distributed and collocated teams. In this study, we examine conflict, its antecedents, and its effects on performance in distributed as compared with collocated teams. Our goal is to understand how conflict plays out in distributed and collocated teams, thus providing insight into how existing models of conflict must be augmented to reflect the trend toward distributed work.
We report the results of a field study of 43 teams, 22 collocated and 21 distributed, from a large multinational company. As expected, the distributed teams reported more task and interpersonal conflict than did the collocated teams. We found evidence that shared identity moderated the effect of distribution on interpersonal conflict and that shared context moderated the effect of distribution on task conflict. Finally, we found that spontaneous communication played a pivotal role in the relationship between distribution and conflict. First, spontaneous communication was associated with a stronger shared identity and more shared context, our moderating variables. Second, spontaneous communication had a direct moderating effect on the distribution-conflict relationship, mitigating the effect of distribution on both types of conflict. We argue that this effect reflects the role of spontaneous communication in facilitating conflict identification and conflict handling.
ABSTRACT: Trust is a key enabler of cooperative human actions. Three main deficiencies about our current knowledge of trust are addressed by this paper. First, due to widely divergent conceptual definitions of trust, the literature on trust is in a state of construct confusion. Second, too little is understood about how trust forms and on what trust is based. Third, little has been discussed about the role of emotion in trust formation. To address the first deficiency, this paper develops a typology of trust. The rest of the paper addresses the second and third deficiencies by proposing a model of how trust is initially formed, including the role of emotion. Dispositional, interpersonal, and impersonal (system) trust are integrated in the model. The paper also clarifies the cognitive and emotional bases on which interpersonal trust is formed in early relationships. The implications of the model are drawn for future research.
Information Richness Theory (IRT) has enjoyed acceptance by information systems researchers throughout the last decade, but recent unfavorable empirical evidence has precipitated a shift away from it and a search for a new theory. Because of this shift, a new definition of communication richness is needed to succeed the IRT definition. Since its inception, IS research on communication richness has been limited to the perspective of positivism and, more recently, interpretivism. In this study, a new perspective to the study of communication richness in computer mediated communication, critical social theory (CST), is introduced. This paper outlines (1) a CST-based definition of communication richness and compares it with positivist and interpretivist definitions of communication richness and (2) a CST-based social action framework for empirical study of organizational communication in any media use situation. The CST definition and framework are used in an intensive investigation of an episode of the managerial use of electronic mail in a company to illustrate how research on communication richness can be conducted from the CST perspective. This illustration also points out the usefulness of the CST perspective in recognizing instances of communication richness in electronic mail communications that would escape detection in not just the IRT perspective in particular, but also positivist and interpretive perspectives in general. Finally, the paper concludes by outlining the potential for future IS research on organizational communication and information technology from the CST perspective. In addition to the specific contribution to the development of a new theory of communication richness in electronic media, this study also contributes an example of CST research on IS and extends the domain of the CST-IS research program.
This study addressed the nature and functioning of relationships of interpersonal trust among managers and professionals in organizations, the factors influencing trust's development, and the implications of trust for behavior and performance. Theoretical foundations were drawn from the sociological literature on trust and the social-psychological literature on trust in close relationships. An initial test of the proposed theoretical framework was conducted in a field setting with 194 managers and professionals.
The Internet plays an important role in the dissemination of information about exchange-traded stocks. This information can come from a variety of sources including disclosures provided through an official company web site or the “rumors” and “tips” frequently posted on any one of the many Internet investment forums located around the world. The rapid development and acceptance of Internet technology presents many difficulties for regulators who may recognize the substantial benefits offered by the technology, but must balance this against the potential for unscrupulous individuals to manipulate others. This paper analyzes a series of posts to an Australian financial forum about a small and thinly traded company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. The analysis provides insights into community views on the substance and ethics of stock price manipulation, and the role of Internet forums.
Ethnographic research is one of the most in-depth research methods possible. Because the researcher is at a research site for a long time -and sees what people are doing as well as what they say they are doing – an ethnographer obtains a deep understanding of the people, the organization, and the broader context within which they work. Ethnographic research is thus well suited to providing information systems researchers with rich insights into the human, social, and organizational aspects of information systems. This article discusses the potential of ethnographic research for IS researchers, and outlines the most important issues that need to be considered in selecting this method.
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Critiques of anthropology from within the discipline and from without have been a major feature of our intellectual life since the late 1960s. The theoretical and empirical bases of cultural and social anthropology have been under attack since the Marxist and New Left critiques of the 1960s to those coming more recently from poststructuralism, postmodernist and literary theory, and postcolonial and cultural studies. As a result, several academic generations have been educated by reading the attacks on the field but rarely dealing with the actual theoretical works and ethnographies of earlier anthropologists. This article deals with several of the most common charges leveled at anthropology, notably that it has regularly and necessarily exoticized "Others," has been ahistorical, and has treated each culture as if it were an isolate, unconnected to any other. It demonstrates how inaccurate and easily falsifiable such claims are and recommends a critical reevaluation of these unexamined and destructive cliches,
This study explores several downstream effects of trust in virtual communities and the antecedents of trust in this unique type of environment. The data, applying an existing scale to measure two dimensions of trust (ability and benevolence/integrity), show that trust had a downstream effect on members' intentions to both give information and get information through the virtual community. Both these apparent dimensions of trust were increased through perceived responsive relationships in the virtual community, by a general disposition to trust, and by the belief that others confide personal information.
This paper outlines an agenda for research that contributes to the development of sustainable virtual world ecosystems. It provides direction for understanding the social aspects of both trust and conflict. Trust is often referred to in research to examine the social interactions observed in virtual communities. It is an important theoretical factor affecting user intention to give and receive information. However, trust is a problematic construct, as it is based on culturally and historically specific assumptions about human association and social organization.
Edmund Leach's book investigates the writings of 'structuralists,' and their different theories: the general incest theory and of animal sacrifice. This book is designed for the use of teaching undergraduates in anthropology, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy and related disciplines faced with structuralist argument. It provides the prolegomena necessary to understand the final chapter of Levi-Strauss's massive four-volume Mythologiques. Some prior knowledge of anthropological literature is useful but not essential. The principal ethnographic source is the Book of Leviticus; this guide should help anyone who is trying to grasp the essentials of 'seminology' - the general theory of how signs and symbols come to convey meaning. The author's core thesis is that: 'the indices in non-verbal communication systems, like the sound elements in spoken language, do not have meaning as isolates, but only as members of set'; the book's special merit is that it makes this kind of jargon comprehensible in terms of our everyday experience.
This chapter explores the question of the value of information technology from a wider angle than the usual financial perspective. The central thesis is that value is always more than just a financial notion, that it always includes a moral or ethical dimension. From this starting point, the paper investigates the different types of values that play a role in information technology. Due to the multitude of values that determine our dealing with information technology, it is clear that there can be conflicts between them. The paper, therefore, proceeds to introduce a framework that allows the conciliation of competing values by introducing values of a higher order, so-called option values and legacy values. It is then demonstrated that this framework can help solve the problem of value conflicts in IT.
In this article, we summarize and review the research on teams and groups in organization settings published from January 1990 to April 1996. The article focuses on studies in which the dependent variables are concerned with various dimensions of effectiveness. A heuristic framework illustrating recent trends in the literature depicts team effectiveness as a function of task, group, and organization design factors, environmental factors, internal processes, external processes, and group psychosocial traits. The review discusses four types of teams: work, parallel, project, and management. We review research findings for each type of team organized by the categories in our heuristic framework. The article concludes by comparing the variables studied for the different types of teams, highlighting the progress that has been made, suggesting what still needs to be done, summarizing key leamings from the last six years, and suggesting areas for further research.
PART I 1. From great men to big men: peace, substitution and competition in the Highlands of New Guinea PIERRE LEMONNIER 2. Great man, big man, chief: a triangulation of the Massim JOHN LIEP 3. Soaring hawks and grounded persons: the politics of rank and gender in North Vanuatu MARGARET JOLLY PART II 4. Punishing the yams: leadership and gender ambivalence on Sabarl Island DEBBORA BATTAGLIA 5. Great men and total systems: North Mekeo hereditary authority and social reproduction MARK MOSKO 6. The cryptic brotherhood of big men and great men in Ilahita DONALD TUZIN 7. Complementarity and rivalry: two contradictory principles in Yafar society BERNARD JUILLERAT 8. How Oro province societies fit Godelier's model ERIC SCHWIMMER PART III 9. The fractal person ROY WAGNER 10. The flute myth and the law of equivalence: origins of a principle of exchange GILLIAN GILLISON 11. One man and many men MARILYN STRATHERN 12. "Interests" in exchange: increment, equivalence and the limits of big-manship RENA LEDERMAN 13. Post-Ipomoean modernism: the Duna example NICHOLAS MODJESKA 14. Big men, great men and women: alternative logics of gender difference DAN JORGENSEN PART IV 15. An unfinished attempt at reconstructing the social processes which may have prompted the transformation of great men societies into big men societies MAURICE GODELIER.
The bulk of our understanding of teams is based on traditional teams in which all members are collocated and communicate face to face. However, geographically distributed teams, whose members are not collocated and must often communicate via technology, are growing in prevalence. Studies from the field are beginning to suggest that geographically distributed teams operate differently and experience different outcomes than traditional teams. For example, empirical studies suggest that distributed teams experience high levels of conflict. These empirical studies offer rich and valuable descriptions of this conflict, but they do not systematically identify the mechanisms by which conflict is engendered in distributed teams. In this paper, we develop a theory-based explanation of how geographical distribution provokes team-level conflict. We do so by considering the two characteristics that distinguish distributed teams from traditional ones: Namely, we examine how being distant from one's team members and relying on technology to mediate communication and collaborative work impacts team members. Our analysis identifies antecedents to conflict that are unique to distributed teams. We predict that conflict of all types (task, affective, and process) will be detrimental to the performance of distributed teams, a result that is contrary to much research on traditional teams. We also investigate conflict as a dynamic process to determine how teams might mitigate these negative impacts over time.
Focusing on two rural cities in Minnesota, this paper analyses ways in which these communities have gone about providing information technology to their citizens. This paper will explain why one city has chosen to take an entrepreneurial approach to networking and the other city has chosen a more collaborative approach, promoting equal access for its citizens. Based on interviews, focus groups, and surveys in the two cities, we find that these divergent approaches are related to fundamental cultural differences in the two communities. One city seems to have a more pronounced reservoir of social capital, meaning that people in this community tend to be more trusting, have more cohesive social ties and are prone toward collaboration. Cooperation and social trust, particularly among community leaders, seem to have played large roles in triggering the development of a community electronic network. Moreover, we discover that political engagement and interpersonal trust among the citizenry in this city seem to be pivotal in sustaining and perpetuating the community endeavor.
In recent years, there has been growing interest in qualitative research methods and their application to information systems. This paper discusses the nature and applicability of one qualitative approach to information systems research, called critical ethnography. Critical ethnography, informed by critical hermeneutics, is one of many possible approaches to ethnographic research. A critical ethnographic study of the development of an information system in mental health is reviewed.
Fore stories about bush spirits provide versions of historical experience not offered in everyday conversation. The main actor begins his adventures as a forest-dwelling, capricious age-mate who intrudes into village space where his activities are less benign. Moving closer to colonial settlements and now described as a wild man, he robs a tradestore, steals from a government office, and is exiled to Australia. With Papua New Guinea Independence, he reemerges as a unifying figure for the Eastern Highlands, appearing on the provincial flag, in public monuments, and in the productions of a new national theatre. At the same time, this beloved trickster of yesteryear continues to live in the South Fore, though in hiding. His public place is now occupied by a tiny garden thief who consumes cash crops and no longer speaks. The changing shape and behaviour of these beings, surrogate selves, address broad processes of political and economic transformation, as well as the contradictions of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial times. © 2002 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.
In this article, we summarize and review the research on teams and groups in organization settings published from January 1990 to April 1996. The article focuses on studies in which the dependent variables are concerned with various dimensions of effectiveness. A heuristic framework illustrating recent trends in the literature depicts team effectiveness as a function of task, group, and organization design factors, environmental factors, internal processes, external processes, and group psychosocial traits. The review discusses four types of teams: work, parallel, project, and management. We review research findings for each type of team organized by the categories in our heuristic framework. The article concludes by comparing the variables studied for the different types of teams, highlighting the progress that has been made, suggesting what still needs to be done, summarizing key learnings from the last six years, and suggesting areas for further research.
This paper is a contribution to the analysis of intra-organizational trust. From a discussion of concepts of trust, we suggest that trust is something which is constructed for and by people in organizations, thereby producing some degree of predictability. Trust is a precarious social accomplishment enacted through the interplay of social or discursive structures, including those of work organizations, and individuated subjects. We argue that bureaucratic organizations effected this construction in such an efficient manner that it 'disappeared' as an issue for organizational theorists, but that shifting organizational forms have re-opened it. We suggest that the advent of corporate culturism in the 1980s offered one kind of reconfiguration of trust in organizations. However, subsequent extensions of organizational reform have undermined corporate culture as a way of constructing trust. These extensions, which, with some caveats, may be called post-bureaucratic, have brought with them new potential bases for trust, and hence control, in organizations. We explore these in two ways. First, we discuss how various types of managerial languages and techniques have the capacity to provide a global 'script' through which particular local contexts can be made sense of, and which allow possible subject positions and identities to be secured. Second, we develop this discussion with reference to two different kinds of employees whose work is in some senses post-bureaucratic: accountants and consultants in Big Five firms, and temporary workers (temps) working through agencies to provide clerical and other services. In a conclusion, we comment on the durability of post-bureaucratic modes of trust.
In this study, we examined the effects of temporal coordination on virtual teams supported by an asynchronous communication technology (Lotus Notes). Specifically, we evaluated the moderating role of a temporal coordination mechanism, process structure, on the relationship between conflict management behavior and virtual team performance. An experiment was conducted with 35 five-person teams in the United States and Japan. Our findings show that the way virtual teams manage internal conflict is a crucial factor in their success and that temporal coordination has some significant moderating effects.
The essay is an attempt to circumscribe the commonly used concept of tribe by anthropologists. History has shown that, either through conquest or contact, the term has been equivalent to "The Other." The most satisfactory approach to the concept has been offered by Morton H. Fried. His perspective is that all tribes are creations of a more politically powerful entity, viz., the state. However, Fried himself has not succeeded in finding a suitable substitute for "tribe," which is essentially a derisive term, in that he concludes that all such units are "secondary tribes."
Scholars in various disciplines have considered the causes, nature, and effects of trust. Prior approaches to studying trust are considered, including characteristics of the trustor, the trustee, and the role of risk. A definition of trust and a model of its antecedents and outcomes are presented, which integrate research from multiple disciplines and differentiate trust from similar constructs. Several research propositions based on the model are presented.
This article is a case study which deals with the consequences of a conflict among the Wodani. It describes the irruption of a Cargo Cult in this remote region of New Guinea, a series of incests provoked by the millenarian ideology, followed by murders and internecine war within the Kundiyau clan and, finally, the attempt to resolve these disorders through the organisation of a homicide payment, which, thanks to an unexpected juridical fiction, is collected not from the murderer but from a clan-brother of the incestuous prophet. These developments allow us to consider a number of more general questions: the notion of incest, of clan affiliation and personal identity in Wodani society; the compensation system allowing for the establishment of an equivalence between human lives and means of payment; the eschatological doctrine explaining the reproductive function of shell money; the theory of causality and juridical responsibility justifying a fictitious charge of murder; and finally, the future of the traditional currency in a society which is now compelled to reformulate its cosmological principle of compensation.
A considerable amount of research has examined trust since our 1995 publication. We revisit some of the critical issues that we addressed and provide clarifications and extensions of the topics of levels of analysis, time, control systems, reciprocity, and measurement. We also recognize recent research in new areas of trust, such as affect, emotion, violation and repair, distrust, international and cross-cultural issues, and context-specific models, and we identify promising avenues for future research.
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Central to Lévi-Strauss's well-known analysis of the trickster figure in North American mythology is an association between the trickster and the animal category “carrion-eater.” A review of the major tricksters in North America indicates that this association is present in one case (Raven), uncertain in the second (Coyote), and demonstrably absent in the case of other major trickster figures (such as the Algonquian Nanabush) who — if anything—are associated with the category “hare.” Merging some of the general ideas on myths developed by such structuralists as Lévi-Strauss and Leach with some of the general ideas on myth developed by Freud, this article develops a new analysis of the trickster myths. I suggest that the underlying logic of these myths is concerned with resolving a universal dilemma: although both “uncontrolled sexuality” and “culture” are desired qualities, the first would lead to the destruction of the second. This perspective allows us to account for the trickster's two most notable characteristics: he is simultaneously portrayed as a selfish buffoon and as the culture-hero who makes human society possible, and he is usually associated with one of three animal categories (coyote, raven, or hare). [myth, Lévi-Strauss, structuralism, Freud, trickster, theory]
The concept of trust has emerged in the MIS field, with a focus on interpersonal or inter-organizational trust in the contexts of e-commerce and virtual teams. The inclusion of the trust concept within IS acceptance models provides further evidence that MIS researchers recognize the relevance of IS trust. While simple trust constructs have been incorporated into existing IS models, and trust models have been developed to address e-commerce issues, a comprehensive model of trust formation for a new information system has not been published. The goal of this research is to advance IS trust research by investigating the trust formation process with new IS. In this paper, two initial trust formation models, applicable to information systems, are reviewed and compared at both the conceptual and empirical levels. The first model was proposed by McKnight, Choudhury and Kacmar in an e-commerce context in 2002. The second model is based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), and was developed to predict people's trust in national identification (NID) systems. Based upon the conceptual comparison, the TRA/TPB-based trust model appears to be more powerful at predicting user trust in IS. An experimental study has been designed to compare these two models in the same context, predicting people's trust in NID systems. This empirical comparison provides more insights for understanding user trust towards IS.