Assessing the Social Network Health of Virtual Communities

2009 ◽  
pp. 669-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hinds ◽  
Ronald M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Software Project ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Community Archives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Development And Validation

In this chapter, the authors suggest how measures of “social network health” can be used to evaluate the status and progress of a virtual community. Using social capital theory as a foundation, the authors describe community health as the general condition of a community leading toward its advancement or decline, and show how social network analytical measures can be applied to existing virtual community archives to measure social network health. They describe the metric development and validation process and use their empirical study of 143 open source software project communities to illustrate how this process can be applied. Their hope is social network health metrics will be devised and integrated into host platforms for various types of virtual communities, thus providing socio-technical system designers and community managers with a valuable new diagnostic tool for tracking the status and progress of their communities.

Assessing the Social Network Health of Virtual Communities

2011 ◽  
pp. 715-730
Author(s):  
David Hinds ◽  
Ronald M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Software Project ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Community Archives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Development And Validation

In this chapter, the authors suggest how measures of “social network health” can be used to evaluate the status and progress of a virtual community. Using social capital theory as a foundation, the authors describe community health as the general condition of a community leading toward its advancement or decline, and show how social network analytical measures can be applied to existing virtual community archives to measure social network health. They describe the metric development and validation process and use their empirical study of 143 open source software project communities to illustrate how this process can be applied. Their hope is social network health metrics will be devised and integrated into host platforms for various types of virtual communities, thus providing socio-technical system designers and community managers with a valuable new diagnostic tool for tracking the status and progress of their communities.

scholarly journals tugas review artikel

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlika Anindya Putri
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Firm Performance ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
The Social

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to develop a structural equation model to explain the complexrelationship between social network and firm performance by introducing the mediating role of trust, sellingcapability and pricing capability.Design/methodology/approach – The research model with hypothesis development was derived basedon the literature. To provide empirical evidence, this study carried out a survey in which the data wereequated with a list of questionnaires with a random survey of 380 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) inthe Indonesian context.Findings – This study indicates that the use of social media in management process will not affect theincreasing firm performance, unless the firms build trust upon social networks. The social network with trustallows the firms to gain a pricing capability and a selling capability, which brings a positive impact on firmperformance. The results also show that the selling and the pricing capabilities become essential following theutilizing the social media, which concerns on trust building.Research limitations/implications – This study focused on the small-to-medium context, which hasconventionally provided an exemplary site for the development of social capital theory but raises issues ofgeneralizability across different contexts.Practical implications – To the managers, it is advisable to encourage their employees to consciouslyexploit the selling capability by enhancing the business networks via social media to achieve the firmperformance.Originality/value – This paper contributes to the social capital theory by explaining the mediating role oftrust in the complex relationship between social network and firm performance. This study provides evidencethat trust plays a pivotal role in social networks, which enable the observed firms to achieve the performance.

Virtual Communities and Social Capital Theory

2011 ◽  
pp. 493-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Ridings
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Geographic Area ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Community Context ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Physically Based ◽  
Civic Group

Imagine a neighborhood where young children can play freely in the streets and various backyards without direct parental oversight, the implication being that other adults in the vicinity will watch out for the children. If a parent is late getting home before the school bus, the children know which neighbors’ house to go to and will be well cared for until the parent arrives home. The residents are very willing to help each other, perhaps by moving a sofa down to a basement or lending a ladder for a project. In such a neighborhood, the first place one turns to for recommendations for plumbers, dry cleaners, and preschools, or perhaps to borrow a tool, is each other. Perhaps one person has secured a job for a neighbor’s daughter, and another family has “paved the way” for their neighbor’s entry into a country club. If a person has a need for emotional support to deal with a personal crisis, she turns to a neighbor. Such a neighborhood can be said to have social capital—that resource that comes from relations between people that makes lives more productive and easier. Social capital is not only created from groups of people living in very close proximity, such as in a neighborhood. It might be created between people belonging to the same church or civic group, or perhaps between people who met at a hospital support group for a particular affliction, or people who are alumni of a particular university. These groups of people can be said to constitute communities, or gatherings of people who have common interests or ties. In the past, these communities tended also to be focused in a local geographic area. This article will examine social capital in the context on online communities. Online communities, like physically based communities such as church groups or neighborhoods, can also be said to produce social capital for their members. These virtual communities can create and foster social capital—and indeed, it may be social capital that draws and retains their members. The background of social capital theory will be examined and then applied in the virtual community context.

scholarly journals Using Online Social Networks to Globalize and Popularize Product Brands in Different Cultural Areas

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Christina Ling-hsing Chang ◽  
Sheng Wu
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Purchase Intention ◽  
Online Social Network ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Impact

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influential factors of online social network advertising in three different cultural areas, being China, India, and the US. This study uses the Social Capital Theory (SCT), and Guanxi Theory, as two types of relation theories; then collects data from the virtual community (or online social network, VC) members of three different areas, a total of 730 valid surveys were completed for model testing. The findings show that: (1) building the relationship dimension of the SCT (trust, identification, and the norm of reciprocity) for the VC members in China and the US societies is more useful than the India society, to spread the brands through the VC; (2) good guanxi for the VC members in China's society is more useful than the Indian and the US societies to spread brands through VC. The result demonstrates that culture differentiation should be consider when researchers investigate the impact of VC advertising contact and attention, attitude towards VC advertising, and purchase intention in VC context.

Exploring Virtual Communities with the Internet Community Text Analyzer (ICTA)

2011 ◽  
pp. 205-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatoliy Gruzd
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Automated Analysis ◽  
Network Data ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Social Network Data ◽  
Network Discovery ◽  
The Social ◽  
Web Based System

The chapter presents a new web-based system called ICTA (http://netlytic.org) for automated analysis and visualization of online conversations in virtual communities. ICTA is designed to help researchers and other interested parties derive wisdom from large datasets. The system does this by offering a set of text mining techniques coupled with useful visualizations. The first part of the chapter describes ICTA’s infrastructure and user interface. The second part discusses two social network discovery procedures used by ICTA with a particular focus on a novel content-based method called name networks. The main advantage of this method is that it can be used to transform even unstructured Internet data into social network data. With the social network data available it is much easier to analyze, and make judgments about, social connections in a virtual community.

scholarly journals Using Online Social Networks to Globalize and Popularize Product Brands in Different Cultural areas

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Purchase Intention ◽  
Online Social Network ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Impact

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influential factors of online social network advertising in three different cultural areas, being China, India, and the US. This study uses the Social Capital Theory (SCT), and Guanxi Theory, as two types of relation theories; then collects data from the virtual community (or online social network, VC) members of three different areas, a total of 730 valid surveys were completed for model testing. The findings show that: (1) building the relationship dimension of the SCT (trust, identification, and the norm of reciprocity) for the VC members in China and the US societies is more useful than the India society, to spread the brands through the VC; (2) good guanxi for the VC members in China's society is more useful than the Indian and the US societies to spread brands through VC. The result demonstrates that culture differentiation should be consider when researchers investigate the impact of VC advertising contact and attention, attitude towards VC advertising, and purchase intention in VC context.

The Virtual Community

2001 ◽  
pp. 166-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Urs E. Gattiker ◽  
Stefano Perlusz ◽  
Kristoffer Bohmann ◽  
Christian Morck Sorensen
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Not For Profit ◽  
The World ◽  
Similarities And Differences

This chapter advances our understanding about a virtual community sponsored by a not-for-profit association and including members from around the world. In particular, this chapter (1) addresses similarities and differences between social and virtual communities, (2) outlines how an inter-routine domain of virtuality and social capital theory may help explain levels of trust, structure, understanding, and free-riding in a virtual community, (3) describes a specific virtual community, its focus and the efforts undertaken to motivate its members, and (4) provides some preliminary data about how this virtual community works on a daily basis in cyberspace.

scholarly journals Experts as facilitators for the implementation of social media in the library? A social network approach

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadewijch Vanwynsberghe ◽  
Elke Boudry ◽  
Ruben Vanderlinde ◽  
Pieter Verdegem
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Network Approach

Purpose – Based on the social capital theory, the authors assume that personal and professional experts are both relevant to people's competence development. However, to date, there is little empirical evidence of how professional experts can support, or impede, people in learning how to deal with social media. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role and position of social media experts in the distribution of information on social media within the library as organization. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws upon social network and qualitative methods, within three public libraries located in Belgium. Findings – The findings suggest that as the most central actors, social media experts in a library play a significant role in either supporting or constraining the distribution of information on social media. Research limitations/implications – While the sample size was chosen to conduct a mixed methods study that would explore how the position of a social media expert in an organization such as the library facilitates or prevents the exchange of social media information, the authors acknowledge the need for large-scale empirical studies that can substantiate the findings in larger and more diverse samples. Originality/value – This unique study explores how the role and position social media experts in Belgian public libraries can support, or impede, librarians in learning how to deal with social media. This study is useful for other public libraries who want to implement social media, establish a social media policy and/or provide social media training.

scholarly journals From social network to firm performance

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 680-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aluisius Hery Pratono
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Firm Performance ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
The Social

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to develop a structural equation model to explain the complex relationship between social network and firm performance by introducing the mediating role of trust, selling capability and pricing capability.Design/methodology/approachThe research model with hypothesis development was derived based on the literature. To provide empirical evidence, this study carried out a survey in which the data were equated with a list of questionnaires with a random survey of 380 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Indonesian context.FindingsThis study indicates that the use of social media in management process will not affect the increasing firm performance, unless the firms build trust upon social networks. The social network with trust allows the firms to gain a pricing capability and a selling capability, which brings a positive impact on firm performance. The results also show that the selling and the pricing capabilities become essential following the utilizing the social media, which concerns on trust building.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focused on the small-to-medium context, which has conventionally provided an exemplary site for the development of social capital theory but raises issues of generalizability across different contexts.Practical implicationsTo the managers, it is advisable to encourage their employees to consciously exploit the selling capability by enhancing the business networks via social media to achieve the firm performance.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the social capital theory by explaining the mediating role of trust in the complex relationship between social network and firm performance. This study provides evidence that trust plays a pivotal role in social networks, which enable the observed firms to achieve the performance.

scholarly journals Trusted Physicians’ Virtual Social Capital Facilitates Decision-Making during Knowledge Sharing

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 6557-6561
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Healthcare Research ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Management Tools ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
The Social

Physicians prefer virtually participating by sharingknowledge for making informed decisions: a theory with scantevidence. This study proposes a model which assesses the effect of physician Social Capital,via the Social Capital Theory (SCT)’s (identification, socialinteractionties, and shared language), on knowledge sharing when moderatedby trust,for decision-making; to assure that knowledge management tools like physicians’ virtual communities certainly affect the current healthcare research topic: medical decision making. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

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