Commitment, Communication & Connection: Understanding Participation in Online Communities from Multiple Perspectives

Online communities have become a major medium for social interaction amongst Internet users. Despite the profusion of online communities, the abundance of individuals and content do not necessarily lead the community to success. Individual communities commonly face issues related to attracting and maintaining members, a key resource of online communities. The primary focus of this dissertation is to compliment and further develop what we currently understand about participation in online communities, and subsequently its members, diversity, and inter-workings. One key to this is to more fully understand the ways in which individuals can behave within an online community. Towards this end, one goal of this dissertation is to move the view of community participation beyond the generally utilized “frequency of contribution” conceptualization to a broader one that accounts for various types of community behaviors that need to be performed by a community’s member (e.g. community citizenship behavior, audience engagement, and content contribution). With this in mind, this dissertation will adapt three theoretical perspectives that offer complimentary perspectives of the dynamics of community participation: participation as an individual-community relationship (commitment), participation as media use (communication), and participation as social ties (connection).