Emerging Leaderships in an Online Community: A Longitudinal Network Analysis

Date
2018-01-03
Authors
Lee, Joyce
Yang, Chin-Sheng
Hsu, Carol
Wang, Jhong-Heng
Contributor
Advisor
Department
Instructor
Depositor
Speaker
Researcher
Consultant
Interviewer
Annotator
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Volume
Number/Issue
Starting Page
Ending Page
Alternative Title
Abstract
Online communities have brought great benefits to society; however, relatively few of them are successful in sustaining community activities. It is necessary to have a better understanding of the contextual development of online communities. This study adopts the theory of networked influence to address the research objective. Data is collected from an online community which has been in operation for ten years. We investigate the community’s sustainability on a longitudinal basis, focusing on its dynamic temporal development, with regard to how it was formed, became robust, and either declined or was sustained. Adopting social network analysis with a qualitative approach, we identify several types of emerging leaders and how the "relay events" between them had a significant impact on communication prolongation. Their influence is found to extend across discussion entities, resulting in communication homogeneity, and leading to significant network effects that are relevant to participants’ interactions.
Description
Keywords
Network Analysis of Digital and Social Media, Online community, networked influence, online discussion forum, social network analysis, content analysis
Citation
Extent
10 pages
Format
Geographic Location
Time Period
Related To
Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Table of Contents
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Rights Holder
Local Contexts
Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.