You may also want to look at some of the literature on Lurkers (e.g., by Preece and colleagues, as well as others more recently). While it doesn't address all of the issues you raise, it will give a few pointers. There is also an article by Butler, et al. ("Community Work, Who Does the Work and Why?") that looks at motivations of highly active members (e.g., admins): http://kb.cospa-project.org/retrieve/3248/butler.pdf Two additional thoughts on what factors may be important to consider: 1) How closely the topic of the discussion aligns with a person's own interests or needs 2) Factors related to the specific nature of the communities - e.g., in health communities (which I have studied) the stage of disease (e.g., newly diagnosed) seems to impact participation; most dramatically, people may stop participating once they are cured of an illness (although interestingly some of the most active members don't). I haven't addressed the question itself, but that is my impression based on interviews etc. Derek Hansen Assistant Professor Maryland's iSchool On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Sarita Yardi <sarita.yardi@gmail.com> wrote:
Neat question Bernie,
I'd be interested in a summary of what you find. It seems like the 1990s rhetoric of the digital divide and access is dying (in the U.S., not worldwide). I'm more concerned about types of participation being unequal. One paper I like that may be of interest is Eszter Hargittai's "Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites".
It looks at how differences in race, gender, and ethnicity influence participation. It's not about motivation--which your question asks--but the Discussion section does look to explore some of the findings towards this end.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/hargittai.html
-- Human-Centered Computing College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology www.cc.gatech.edu/~yardi _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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