Hi Ruth The anthropologist Alexander Knorr (Munich) has done such work among game modders. There's also an interesting case study from Jonathan Skinner (Queen's Uni Belfast) about Montserrat residents who had to evacuate the island following a volcanic eruption and regrouped online, see http://www.media-anthropology.net/skinner_evergreen.pdf John Dr John Postill C3 Research Institute (C3RI) Furnival Building 153 Arundel Street Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield S1 2NU United Kingdom http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/ ------ Original Message ------ Received: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:48:14 AM BST From: ruth <ruth@ruthdeller.co.uk> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Death/Migration of an online community

Oh, and I pressed send before asking: has anyone done any research into death/migration of online communities already?

Thanks

R x

On Thu , "ruth" ruth@ruthdeller.co.uk sent:

Hi everyone

Yesterday, the owner of a large online fan community that I'm on the fringes of announced that he was closing the site, and this has caused a lot of uproar as the membership (41,000, with 16,000 active posters) are dealing with the news and looking at what to do next).  It'll make a fascinating study to look at how the community deals with the transition, but I was wondering about the permissions involved for such research: the forum rules state posters' words are their own and can't be reproduced without their permission, which is fine, but in such cases where there's a site owner, is it best practice, or even essential, to go to them first and then ask the posters? 

(The same is likely to apply to the forums they migrate to)

Thanks

Ruth

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