Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 11)

RESEARCH business and economics ONLINE After suffering from a herniated disk, a person identiﬁed as Leona1948 felt pain and numbness in her left leg and arm. The 60-year-old posted a question on WebMD.com’s bulletin board for people with back pain, asking if her leg and arm discomfort was associated with her back problems. Within the hour, Leona1948 received a sympathetic message from a member of WebMD’s community, called Aloha Shar, who listed her qualifications—a back injury in 1998, followed by numerous treatments and surgeries. Other posts on the Back Pain Support Group bulletin board that day discussed family relations (one was titled “Help—Insensitive husband”), offered tips for pain management, shared concerns and prayers, and even told jokes. Although their only connection was an aching back, these people had formed friendships and community. “Sometimes, it’s easier on the Internet to ﬁnd people who are in similar situations than to ﬁnd them in your church or other community group,” says Catherine Ridings, associate professor in the College of Business and Economics’ department of management. Virtual communities, such as the one on WebMD, offer a location for people with a shared passion to meet each other. On bulletin boards, members can discuss the soil treatments for growing organic garlic or destinations for ﬂy ﬁshing with like-minded people. Unlike other social settings, people can tailor their participation in online communities to their specific interests and available time. Those dying from breast cancer, caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s, or expecting a child can receive encouragement from others struggling with similar issues, even in the pre-dawn hours. “With people working more because of double-income families, longer hours, and longer commutes, they have less time to participate in traditional social communities like churches and bowling leagues,” Ridings says, citing Bowling Alone, Alone, Robert D. Putnam’s groundbreaking 1995 book about the decline of American community life. “Since it’s harder to ﬁnd faceto-face groups, it may be that virtual communities take the place of these.” Ridings, who is active in WebMD’s community and in TripAdvisor.com’s Cozumel, Mexico discussions, has studied these virtual communities for almost 10 years. Her work provides valuable information to companies hosting online communities, many of which are driven by advertising. “To be successful, you need to have people come to your Web site and participate,” she says. Recently, she examined conversations among members of WebMD’s back support community. After collecting bulletin board posts written from 2000 to 2004, Ridings grouped the posts into monthly periods and determined the frequency of posts and conversation topics during those periods. Conversation within the group ebbed and ﬂowed, oscillating between a low of 740 messages per month to a high of 6,333 messages per month. She found that these spikes and dips had little correlation to external events or with the number of individuals posting. In fact, months with the fewest number of individuals involved often had the most posts. The number of posts is driven by the individual group and is very much dependent on context, Ridings concluded. She suspects that when the number of posts spiked, the users became overwhelmed, and this “information overload” discouraged members from using the community. At the same time, a critical mass of users became signiﬁcantly more active, resulting in more activity. She also found that, over time, message topics shifted from back pain to social messages, such as birthday wishes and requests for prayer, again without any obvious outside influence. Toward the end of her study period, approximately 50 percent of the messages were social and only 30 percent were specific to back pain. “The internal dynamics of the group changed,” she says. Ridings first became intrigued by social communities while writing her dissertation in the late 1990s. “I was fascinated with the issue of trust,” she says. “Why would people trust each other online when they did not know the other person?” She created a survey asking members of 27 online communities to describe why they were involved. Almost 400 people responded with more than 550 reasons. Many people joined virtual communities to exchange information. Wine lovers sought the best wine pairs, and travel enthusiasts swapped tips on ﬁnding the best hotels. Others sought social support and friendship. Gender seems to inﬂuence the primary reason people scan bulletin boards. Ridings’ studies suggest that men join virtual communities on a quest for information, while women seek relationships. Personality also plays a role. “People who have a stronger disposition to trust in general place a lot more trust in others in the virtual community,” Ridings says. “Also, people have a notion of reciprocity. I participate in the community and answer questions knowing that sometime in the future someone in the community will, in return, answer my questions.” The final reason people join online communities? “It’s fun,” says Ridings. —Becky Straw spring 2008 11 ILLUSTRATION FROM IMAGES.COM/CORBIS, PHOTO BY RICHARD BELL FINDING COMMUNITY http://www.webmd.com http://TripAdvisor.com

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Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Alumni News Cover Story: In Galileo's Wake Technically Funny The Healing Game Looking for America The Last Word

Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008

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