In my thought, to look only on the numbers is a fault. We did many studies about online communities (mailing list, chat)with very different numbers of participants. Every community had a distinct structure with a centre-periphery structure. What we found is, that communication will break down if the centre becomes inactive. So it is not a question of a pure mass, it is a question about the intern structure of the community. Best wishes Christian Two publications to this topic: Christian Stegbauer, 2001, Grenzen virtueller Gemeinschaft. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag Christian Stegbauer & Alexander Rausch, 2006, Strukturalistische Internetforschung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Anders Fagerjord schrieb:
Before this thread snowballs into a discussion of methodology, two cultures or Truth:
I'm not a "quant person", but it seems to me that if we are to find a measure of critical mass, that will not be the number of members, but a quantification of the communication between them. The number of messages they post, etc.
--anders
-- Anders Fagerjord, dr. art. Associate professor,
Department of Media and Communcation, Unversity of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern N-0317 OSLO Norway
http://www.media.uio.no http://fagerjord.no
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-- ************************************************* PD Dr. Christian Stegbauer Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften Institut für Gesellschafts- und Politikanalyse 60054 Frankfurt Tel.Uni: 069 798-23543 Tel.priv: 069 55 43 92 e-mail: stegbauer@soz.uni-frankfurt.de Magazin: kommunikation@gesellschaft Journal für alte und neue Medien aus soziologischer, kulturanthropologischer und kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Perspektive www.kommunikation-gesellschaft.de noch druckfrisch: Stegbauer, Christian / Rausch, Alexander Strukturalistische Internetforschung. 2006. Ca. 240 S. Wiesbaden, VS-Verlag,* ISBN: 3-531-15110-X und ab 11.06 Stegbauer, Christian Geschmackssache? Eine kleine Soziologie für Genießer. 2006. Ca. 200 Seiten.ISBN 3-939519-16-2. Hamburg: Merus Mailingliste zur sozialen Netzwerkanalyse SNA-De https://dlist.server.uni-frankfurt.de/mailman/listinfo/sna-de *************************************************