Abstract
Various information systems have emerged to facilitate citizen participation in the life of their communities. However, there is a lack of robust understanding of what enables the sustainability of such systems. This work introduces a framework to identify and analyze various factors that influence the sustainability of “hyper-local” information systems. Using longitudinal observations of participation from 35 online neighborhood discussion forums over six years, we analyze the relationship between sustainability and online–offline community characteristics. Our results not only show patterns consistent with previous observations but reveal the dubious influences of member heterogeneity and network structure. Design insights are discussed.
- Jaime Arguello, Brian S. Butler, Elisabeth Joyce, Robert Kraut, Kimberly S. Ling, Carolyn Rosé, and Xiaoqing Wang. 2006. Talk to me: Foundations for successful individual-group interactions in online communities. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’06). 959--968.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Nicholas Babchuk and Alan Booth. 1969. Voluntary association membership: A longitudinal analysis. Am. Sociol. Rev. (1969), 31--45. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Lars Backstrom, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Xiangyang Lan. 2006. Group formation in large social networks: Membership, growth, and evolution. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD’06). 44--54.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Prasad Balkundi and David A. Harrison. 2006. Ties, leaders, and time in teams: Strong inference about network structure’s effects on team viability and performance. Acad. Manage. J. 49, 1 (2006), 49--68. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Daniel J. Beal, Robin R. Cohen, Michael J. Burke, and Christy L. McLendon. 2003. Cohesion and performance in groups: A meta-analytic clarification of construct relations.J. Appl. Psychol. 88, 6 (2003), 989. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Anne Beamish. 1995. Communities On-line: Community-based Computer Networks. Master’s thesis. Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
- Gerard Beenen, Kimberly Ling, Xiaoqing Wang, Klarissa Chang, Dan Frankowski, Paul Resnick, and Robert E. Kraut. 2004. Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’04). 212--221. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Michael J. Brzozowski, Thomas Sandholm, and Tad Hogg. 2009. Effects of feedback and peer pressure on contributions to enterprise social media. In Proceedings of the ACM 2009 International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP’09). 61--70. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Moira Burke, Cameron Marlow, and Thomas Lento. 2009. Feed me: Motivating newcomer contribution in social network sites. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’09). 945--954.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Ronald S. Burt. 1999. The social capital of opinion leaders. Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci. 566, 1 (1999), 37--54. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Brian S. Butler. 1999. The Dynamics of Cyberspace: Examining and Modeling Online Social Structure. Ph.D. Dissertation. Carnegie Mellon University. Chapter: When is a group not a group: An empirical examination of metaphors for online social structure.Google Scholar
- Brian S. Butler. 2001. Membership size, communication activity, and sustainability: A resource-based model of online social structures. Info. Sys. Res. 12, 4 (2001), 346--362. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Brian S. Butler, Patrick J. Bateman, Peter H. Gray, and E. Ilana Diamant. 2014. An attraction-selection-attrition theory of online community size and resilience.Mis Quart. 38, 3 (2014), 699--728. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Angela Button and Helen Partridge. 2007. Community networks today: Analysing new media for local social networking and community engagement. In Prato CIRN Conference: Communities and Action. 5--7.Google Scholar
- Tien-Dung Cao, Tran-Vu Pham, Quang-Hieu Vu, Hong-Linh Truong, Duc-Hung Le, and Schahram Dustdar. 2016. MARSA: A marketplace for realtime human sensing data. ACM Trans. Internet Technol. 16, 3, Article 16 (May 2016), 21 pages. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2883611 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- John M. Carroll. 2012. The Neighborhood in the Internet. Routledge, 23--47.Google Scholar
- John M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson. 1996. Developing the blacksburg electronic village. Commun. ACM 39, 12 (1996), 69--74. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- John M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson. 2001. Better home shopping or new democracy?: Evaluating community network outcomes. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’01). 372--379.Google Scholar
- John M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson. 2013. Wild at home: The neighborhood as a living laboratory for HCI. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 20, 3, Article 16 (2013), 16:1--16:28 pages.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jilin Chen, Yuqing Ren, and John Riedl. 2010. The effects of diversity on group productivity and member withdrawal in online volunteer groups. In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’10). 821--830. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Boreum Choi, Kira Alexander, Robert E. Kraut, and John M. Levine. 2010. Socialization tactics in wikipedia and their effects. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’10). 107--116. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- James S. Coleman. 1988. Social capital in the creation of human capital. Am. J. Sociol. 94 (1988), 95--120. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Ken Colstad and Efrem Lipkin. 1975. Community memory: A public information network. SIGCAS Comput. Soc. 6, 4 (1975), 6--7. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Lincoln Dahlberg. 2001. Extending the public sphere through cyberspace: The case of minnesota e-democracy. First Monday 6, 3 (2001). Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Aldo de Moor. 2009. Moving community informatics research forward. J. Community Inf. 5, 1 (2009).Google Scholar
- Rosta Farzan, Robert Kraut, Aditya Pal, and Joseph Konstan. 2012. Socializing volunteers in an online community: A field experiment. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 325--334. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Samah Gad, Naren Ramakrishnan, Keith N. Hampton, and Andrea Kavanaugh. 2012. Bridging the divide in democratic engagement: Studying conversation patterns in advantaged and disadvantaged communities. In Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Social Informatics. 165--176. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Keith N. Hampton. 2002. Place-based and IT mediated “community.” Plann. Theory Pract. 3, 2 (2002), 228--231. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Keith N. Hampton. 2007. Neighborhoods in the network society the e-neighbors study. Inf. Commun. Soc. 10, 5 (2007), 714--748. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Keith N. Hampton and Barry Wellman. 2003. Neighboring in netville: How the internet supports community and social capital in a wired suburb. City Commun. 2, 4 (2003), 277--311. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw. 2015. Mind the skills gap: The role of internet know-how and gender in differentiated contributions to wikipedia. Inf. Commun. Soc. 18, 4 (2015), 424--442. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Michael A. Hogg. 1993. Group cohesiveness: A critical review and some new directions. Eur. Rev. Soc. Psychol. 4, 1 (1993), 85--111. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Yuheng Hu, Shelly D. Farnham, and Andrés Monroy-Hernández. 2013. Whoo.ly: Facilitating information seeking for hyperlocal communities using social media. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’13). 3481--3490.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Richard Joiner, Caroline Stewart, and Chelsey Beaney. 2015. Gender digital divide. The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Psychology, Technology and Society (2015), 74.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Elisabeth Joyce and Robert E. Kraut. 2006. Predicting continued participation in newsgroups. J. Comput.-Med. Commun. 11, 3 (2006), 723--747.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Naewon Kang and Nojin Kwak. 2003. A multilevel approach to civic participation individual length of residence, neighborhood residential stability, and their interactive effects with media use. Commun. Res. 30, 1 (2003), 80--106. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Andrea L. Kavanaugh and Scott J. Patterson. 2001. The impact of community computer networks on social capital and community involvement. Am. Behav. Sc. 45, 3 (2001), 496--509. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Steve W. J. Kozlowski and Daniel R. Ilgen. 2006. Enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams. Psychol. Sci. Publ. Interest 7, 3 (2006), 77--124. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Robert E. Kraut and Andrew T. Fiore. 2014. The role of founders in building online groups. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 8 Social Computing. 722--732. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Robert E. Kraut, Mary Lou Maher, Judith Olson, Thomas W. Malone, Peter Pirolli, and John C. Thomas. 2010. Scientific foundations: A case for technology- mediated social-participation theory. Computer 43, 11 (2010), 22--28. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick. 2012. Encouraging contribution to online communities. In Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. MIT Press Cambridge, MA, 21--76.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Cliff Lampe and Erik Johnston. 2005. Follow the (slash) dot: Effects of feedback on new members in an online community. In Proceedings of the 2005 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP’05). 11--20.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Neal Lathia, Daniele Quercia, and Jon Crowcroft. 2012. The hidden image of the city: Sensing community well-being from urban mobility. In Pervasive Computing. Springer, 91--98. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- John M. Levine and Richard L. Moreland. 2012. A history of small group research. In Handbook of the History of Social Psychology. Arie W. Kruglanski and Wolfgang Stroebe (eds.). Psychology Press New York, NY, 383--405.Google Scholar
- Nan Lin. 1999. Building a network theory of social capital. Connections 22, 1 (1999), 28--51.Google Scholar
- Yu-Ru Lin, Brian Keegan, Drew Margolin, and David Lazer. 2014. Rising tides or rising stars?: Dynamics of shared attention on twitter during media events. PloS One 9, 5 (2014), e94093.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Claudia López and Rosta Farzan. 2015. From community networks to hyper-local social media. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 8 Social Computing (CSCW’15 Companion). 239--242.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Claudia López and Rosta Farzan. 2015. Lend me sugar, i am your neighbor!: A content analysis of online forums for local communities. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies (C8T’15). 59--67.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Claudia López, Yu-Ru Lin, and Rosta Farzan. 2015. What makes hyper-local online discussion forums sustainable? In Proceedings of the 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’15). 2445--2454.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Christina A. Masden, Catherine Grevet, Rebecca E. Grinter, Eric Gilbert, and W. Keith Edwards. 2014. Tensions in scaling-up community social media: A multi-neighborhood study of nextdoor. In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 3239--3248. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Miller Mc Pherson. 1983. The size of voluntary organizations. Soc. Forces 61, 4 (1983), 1044--1064. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- J Miller McPherson and Thomas Rotolo. 1996. Testing a dynamic model of social composition: Diversity and change in voluntary groups. Am. Sociol. Rev. (1996), 179--202.Google Scholar
- David R. Millen and John F. Patterson. 2002. Stimulating social engagement in a community network. In Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’02). 306--313. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Thomas P. Novak. 1998. Bridging the racial divide on the internet. Science-AAAS-Weekly Paper Edition 280, 5362 (1998), 390--391.Google Scholar
- Dara O’Neil. 2002. Assessing community informatics: A review of methodological approaches for evaluating community networks and community technology centers. Internet Res. 12, 1 (2002), 76--102.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Andrew Perrin and Maeve Duggan. 2015. Men Catch up with Women on Overall Social Media Use. Technical Report. Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
- Pamela A. Popielarz and Miller McPherson. 1995. On the edge or in between: Niche position, niche overlap, and the duration of voluntary association memberships. Am. J. Sociol. (1995), 698--720. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Daphne R. Raban, Mihai Moldovan, and Quentin Jones. 2010. An empirical study of critical mass and online community survival. In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’10). 71--80. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Damian Radcliffe. 2012. Here and Now UK Hyperlocal Media Today. Technical Report. Nesta.Google Scholar
- Paul Resnick. 2001. Beyond bowling together: Sociotechnical capital. HCI New Millen. 77 (2001), 247--272.Google Scholar
- Paul Resnick, Joseph Konstan, Yan Chen, and Robert E. Kraut. 2012. Starting new online communities. In Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. MIT Press Cambridge, MA, 231--280.Google Scholar
- Everett M. Rogers, Lori Collins-Jarvis, and Joseph Schmitz. 1994. The PEN project in santa monica: Interactive communication, equality, and political action. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. 45, 6 (1994), 401--410. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Thomas Rotolo. 2000. Town heterogeneity and affiliation: A multilevel analysis of voluntary association membership. Sociol. Perspect. 43, 2 (2000), 271--289. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Chandan Sarkar, Donghee Yvette Wohn, and Cliff Lampe. 2012. Predicting length of membership in online community “everything2” using feedback. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work Companion (CSCW Companion’12). 207--210. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jen Schradie. 2012. The trend of class, race, and ethnicity in social media inequality: Who still cannot afford to blog? Inf. Commun. Soc. 15, 4 (2012), 555--571. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Doug Schuler. 1994. Community networks: Building a new participatory medium. Commun. ACM 37, 1 (1994), 38--51. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- John C. Scott. 1957. Membership and participation in voluntary associations. Am. Sociol. Rev. 22, 3 (1957), 315--326. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Thiago H. Silva, Pedro O. S. Vaz de Melo, Jussara M. Almeida, Juliana Salles, and Antonio A. F. Loureiro. 2014. Revealing the city that we cannot see. ACM Trans. Internet Technol. 14, 4, Article 26 (Dec. 2014), 23 pages. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2677208 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Lyn Simpson. 2005. Community informatics and sustainability: Why social capital matters. J. Community Inf. 1, 2 (2005), 102--119.Google Scholar
- Jacob Solomon and Rick Wash. 2014. Critical mass of what? Exploring community growth in wikiprojects. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM’14).Google Scholar
- Marco Tortoriello, Ray Reagans, and Bill McEvily. 2012. Bridging the knowledge gap: The influence of strong ties, network cohesion, and network range on the transfer of knowledge between organizational units. Organiz. Sci. 23, 4 (2012), 1024--1039. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Xiaoqing Wang, Brian S. Butler, and Yuqing Ren. 2013. The impact of membership overlap on growth: An ecological competition view of online groups. Organiz. Sci. 24, 2 (2013), 414--431. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Yi-Chia Wang and Robert Kraut. 2012. Twitter and the development of an audience: Those who stay on topic thrive!. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12). 1515--1518.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Yi-Chia Wang, Robert Kraut, and John M. Levine. 2012. To stay or leave?: The relationship of emotional and informational support to commitment in online health support groups. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’12). 833--842.Google Scholar
- Molly McLure Wasko and Samer Faraj. 2005. Why should I share? Examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice. MIS Quart. 29, 1 (2005), 35--57. Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Miaomiao Wen and Carolyn Penstein Rose. 2012. Understanding participant behavior trajectories in online health support groups using automatic extraction methods. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP’12). 179--188. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Xidao Wen, Di Lu, Yu-Ru Lin, and Claudia López. 2016. The roles of information seeking dynamics in sustaining the community participation. In Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC’16). IEEE, 357--362.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Kate Williams and Joan C. Durrance. 2008. Social networks and social capital: Rethinking theory in community informatics. J. Community Inf. 4, 3 (2008), 1--20.Google Scholar
- Chaolun Xia, Raz Schwartz, Ke Xie, Adam Krebs, Andrew Langdon, Jeremy Ting, and Mor Naaman. 2014. CityBeat: Real-time social media visualization of hyper-local city data. In Demo in International World Wide Web Conference (WWW Companion’14).Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jiang Yang, Xiao Wei, Mark S Ackerman, and Lada A Adamic. 2010. Activity lifespan: An analysis of user survival patterns in online knowledge sharing communities. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM’10).Google Scholar
- Haiyi Zhu, Jilin Chen, Tara Matthews, Aditya Pal, Hernan Badenes, and Robert E Kraut. 2014a. Selecting an effective niche: An ecological view of the success of online communities. In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 301--310. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Haiyi Zhu, Robert E. Kraut, and Aniket Kittur. 2014b. The impact of membership overlap on the survival of online communities. In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’14). 281--290. Google Scholar
Digital Library
Index Terms
Behind the Myths of Citizen Participation: Identifying Sustainability Factors of Hyper-Local Information Systems
Recommendations
Lend me sugar, I am your neighbor!: a content analysis of online forums for local communities
C&T '15: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Communities and TechnologiesA variety of online tools have grown as platforms to encourage community development among neighbors. In a study of 22 online forums for local communities, we explored how the content shared on these systems reflects their contribution to their goal of ...
MoodBar: Increasing New User Retention in Wikipedia through Lightweight Socialization
CSCW '15: Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social ComputingSocialization in online communities allows existing members to welcome and recruit newcomers, introduce them to community norms and practices, and sustain their early participation. However, socializing newcomers does not come for free: in large ...
Psychological factors behind the lack of participation in online discussions
The majority of participants in online communities are lurkers, who browse discussions without actively contributing to them. Their lack of active participation threatens the sustainability of online communities. This review provides an understanding as ...






Comments