Electronic Writing & Publishing
Fall 2007
Other Mini-Media Choice Projects:
Mini-Media Choice: Online Community Project
Due 10/23 (your choice 1 of 4 projects: Online Communities, Podcasting, Online Help, or E-Journals)
Worth 5% of your final grade.
Turn in on paper.
Purpose: To become familiar with virtual communities and to analyze online communities as a method (and place) of electronic publishing and writing. Also to analyze the online community of your choice and understand what qualifies as a community.
Recommended for: This Mini-Media Choice Project is recommended for those who are interested in communication, rhetoric, culture, and social interactions.
For this project you will need to observe (and if you want join and participate in) the virtual community of your choice. You will need to actively observe the community for at least a week and should also look through the history of the community for more analysis. Do be careful choosing your community as you will need to justify that it is an actual community. After you have observed the community and the history of the community, then write a paper to me discussing and analyzing both the experience and the community. In your analysis discuss the following questions:
- What community did you observe? Provide a brief description and URL or access info. Why did you choose this community?
- Why is this a community and not just a group? How does it quality? Does it work as a “third space”?
- How well does it meet the requirements from the readings of a online community:
- Are there clearly “sufficient human feeling” and “webs of personal relationships” (Rheingold, both)
- What are the community policies? Are these written down or “unspoken”?
- Are/is there (and explain with details and examples):
- shared activities and strong emotional ties?
- shared access to resources and policies concerning the resources?
- reciprocity of info, services, and support?
- shared context including language?
- a sense of community?
- rituals?
- Are the five stages of the Kim's participation hierarchy clear (lurker, novice, regular, leader, elder)? How can you determine what stages people are at?
- Who is part of the community? Discuss the participants and provide analysis information.
- Why does this community exist? What is its purpose?
- Is it clear why people participate? Do their reasons seem to match Kollock's motivations?
- What form does the community take? What technology is used for the community?
- Did any community problems or issues occur when you were observing or did any pop up when you were looking at the archives? Did any interesting or surprising things happen or pop up?
- How do you see online communities fitting into the electronic publishing and writing and the Internet at large?
- What will you take away from your observations and analysis?
- Will you continue with this community?