Special Issue on ‘Online ‘tells’ and the management of virtual communities’
Guest Editor
Demosthenes Akoumianakis, Professor
Department of Applied Information Technology & Multimedia
Technological Education Institution of Crete,
Stavromenos 71004, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
Email: da@epp.teicrete.gr , dakoumianakis@gmail.com
Guest Editor
Demosthenes Akoumianakis, Professor
Department of Applied Information Technology & Multimedia
Technological Education Institution of Crete,
Stavromenos 71004, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
Email: da@epp.teicrete.gr , dakoumianakis@gmail.com
Call for papers
For more than a decade now, virtual communities have emerged in myriad of forms to foster new opportunities for socialization, networking, professional development, collaborative work and the advancement of scientific endeavors. Throughout this time, researchers from different disciplines have embarked on a variety of attempts to gain insights into what makes these communities viable, how the media that support them foster, enable or constrain online encounters, and the degree to which the structures they create enhance culture. The primary focus of recent scholarly work has been on theoretical models, engineering tools or technical instruments that can be used to uncover how virtual communities are formed, become stable, and are maintained and sustained. Although the thrust of this of research, which is informed largely by social sciences, has made useful inroads into understanding community management in virtual settings, it dismisses or undermines the importance of the practice these communities engage in, i.e. what members actually do online. As a result, very little is known about the artifactual properties of the technology (functional and non-functional qualities), the way in which technology is implicated in the practice of a community, how new social practices emerge or evolve, the extent to which online and offline practices intertwine as well as how the history of online interactions drives recurrent co-engagement in practice.
This special issue will concentrate on understanding virtual communities through analysis of the online traces or ‘tells’ of their members as they engage in their normal practices. Online ‘tells’ may vary in type and structure to include threaded discussions, social visualizations of collaborative activities, domain-specific artifacts such information-based products or services, etc. Such online tells reveal, not only structural elements of the community, but also what is known by members, their shared values, beliefs and codes of practice.
Consequently, this special issue will seek to explore (a) how community life is revealed through online praxis and (b) what technological inscriptions (i.e., connectivity, abstraction, plasticity, boundary crossing, etc) are needed to foster and facilitate co-engagement within or across practice domains. In an effort to provide new insights to the above, we seek contributions that aim to address the following themes:
• Practice-based studies of virtual communities / networks of practice
• Maintaining communities across disciplinary / temporal boundaries
• Boundary artifacts in collaborative work and virtual community spaces
• Community tells and traces in virtual settings
• Novel systems and platforms for community support
• Community widgets with social scent
• Non-functional requirements and quality attributes (i.e., plasticity, social / informational connectivity, social translucence, interoperability, etc) characterizing virtual community spaces
For more than a decade now, virtual communities have emerged in myriad of forms to foster new opportunities for socialization, networking, professional development, collaborative work and the advancement of scientific endeavors. Throughout this time, researchers from different disciplines have embarked on a variety of attempts to gain insights into what makes these communities viable, how the media that support them foster, enable or constrain online encounters, and the degree to which the structures they create enhance culture. The primary focus of recent scholarly work has been on theoretical models, engineering tools or technical instruments that can be used to uncover how virtual communities are formed, become stable, and are maintained and sustained. Although the thrust of this of research, which is informed largely by social sciences, has made useful inroads into understanding community management in virtual settings, it dismisses or undermines the importance of the practice these communities engage in, i.e. what members actually do online. As a result, very little is known about the artifactual properties of the technology (functional and non-functional qualities), the way in which technology is implicated in the practice of a community, how new social practices emerge or evolve, the extent to which online and offline practices intertwine as well as how the history of online interactions drives recurrent co-engagement in practice.
This special issue will concentrate on understanding virtual communities through analysis of the online traces or ‘tells’ of their members as they engage in their normal practices. Online ‘tells’ may vary in type and structure to include threaded discussions, social visualizations of collaborative activities, domain-specific artifacts such information-based products or services, etc. Such online tells reveal, not only structural elements of the community, but also what is known by members, their shared values, beliefs and codes of practice.
Consequently, this special issue will seek to explore (a) how community life is revealed through online praxis and (b) what technological inscriptions (i.e., connectivity, abstraction, plasticity, boundary crossing, etc) are needed to foster and facilitate co-engagement within or across practice domains. In an effort to provide new insights to the above, we seek contributions that aim to address the following themes:
• Practice-based studies of virtual communities / networks of practice
• Maintaining communities across disciplinary / temporal boundaries
• Boundary artifacts in collaborative work and virtual community spaces
• Community tells and traces in virtual settings
• Novel systems and platforms for community support
• Community widgets with social scent
• Non-functional requirements and quality attributes (i.e., plasticity, social / informational connectivity, social translucence, interoperability, etc) characterizing virtual community spaces
Schedule
Expression of interest (by title and abstract submission): 31 August 2010
Full paper submission: 1 November 2010
Author notification: 31 December 2010
Expected publication date: Early 2011
Submission
Short abstracts (due 31/8/2010) and full papers should be submitted by email to the Guest Editor Prof. D. Akoumianakis (da@epp.teicrete.gr , dakoumianakis@gmail.com - please use both emails). Each manuscript will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers assessing novelty/significance of the manuscript, relevance and timeliness of the manuscript, comprehensiveness of literature review, organization and clarity of the manuscript and the overall strengths of the manuscript.
