For me, the functions of online communities have also been certain - I use different platforms to reach my friends or colleagues so I could save my time and/or money spent on telecommunication services.
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The author of the thesis formulated different areas of reasons for online community uses:
- insider and outsider looks at online groups using various online tools
- parallel stream of studies set out to examine the ways in which existing local communities employed the new medium in discussing pressing issues and building stronger bonds among citizens and neighbors
- third area of active research served business organizations that wanted to use the online community to stimulate team work and productivity
- fourth area of discussion of the online community has developed to consider the use of the Internet in social support and also the social-psychological impact of online interaction on the individual’s psychological well-being
- subsequently e-businesses took this same point of departure and evolved it into a marketing strategy
"The online community arose from the margins of the medium, intruding on its original information-centered design from various sources such as bulletin boards, newsgroups and early computer conferencing systems. With the addition of this unanticipated communication layer, the technology addresses a wider range of human needs and potentials."
One of the interesting subjects covered by the research was the dispute whether or not the online communities are "real". There has always been a great dispute between "real relationships" vs "pseudo-communities". As said before, the definitions of a community varies in hundreds. The author successfully cites to a source, saying
“All communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined” (1983). Thus, some sort of virtuality is a normal aspect of community life, regardless of the nature of the medium on which it relies (Feenberg & Bakardjieva 2004)
Therefore we cannot say, that online communities are "fake" and un-realistic.
"In the end, communities are not solely about aggregating information or resources, but about bringing people together to meet some of their social and commercial needs (Rothaermel & Sugiyama 2001)."
The author of the thesis also introduced the “BIGSIX”: Belonging, Intimacy, Generativity, Support, Influence, and eXploration (Forsyth et al). These nouns explain, why would a person want to be in a group.
Another theory of group-participation, Social Identity Theory (SIT), in brief cited, that identification with a social group is mainly motivated by the need for positive self-esteem (Aharpour & Brown 2002).
Refining and conceptualising different ratifications for group-belonging, the author created 13 concepts of functions for groups:
social identity, self and social learning, intergroup comparison, ingroup comparison, categorization, independence, hedonism, relations, unity, support and altruism, material benefits, expression, self-esteem
The author distressed, that "despite the clear-cut structure emerged from analyses, the reliability coefficients of the factors extracted never reach extremely high values". Research among Rada7.ee members showed, that in conclusive, these were the factors motivating (influencing it's users to use/exist in the community:
- First factor represents a function of social identity and unity
- Second factor clearly represents a function of self and social learning
- The author names factor 3 as categorization and ingroup comparison
- The content of items in fourth factor refers to support and altruism
- Fifth factor clearly shows the need of expression
In the end author stated the following: "Aharpour & Brown (2002) studied different groups and found that identity functions are not all equally endorsed in different groups. This means that the functions above does not have to harmonise with all online communities. To achieve more general results, the future studies should consider sampling data from different online communities."
This thesis integrated different concepts for studying functions of groups into a single measure for online communities. Initial concepts were designed and tested. The author also provided descriptions for factors that derived from data analysis, describing answers to initial research questions.
In conclusion, the author states, that "findings clearly show that this approach is appropriate to study online communities."
Link to text:
http://www.cs.tlu.ee/instituut/opilaste_tood/magistri_tood/2009_kevad/ivo_kiviorg_magistritoo.pdf
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