Knowledge contribution is one of the essential factors behind the success of blogging communities (BCs). This research studies knowledge contribution behavior in a BC from the perspective of knowledge contributors and their characteristics using the lens of social identity theory. Social identity theory asserts that individuals are fundamentally motivated to present or communicate their identit...

As is widely practiced in real world societies, fraud and deception are also ubiquitous in the virtual world. Tracking and detecting such malicious activities in the cyber space is much more challenging due to veiled identities and imperfect knowledge of the environment. Recommender systems are one of the most attractive applications widely used for helping users find their interests from a wid...

Owing to the absence of a reliable access control tool in the virtual worlds, these spaces are more and more exposed to cybercrimes. In the guise of fictive identities, cybercriminals involve multiple avatars to perform illegal activities. To deal with this, setting up an access control mechanism in these digital environments is becoming necessary. In this paper, we propose an original access c...

Invoking a theoretical framework situated at the intersection of humanistic accounts of social identity construction, cognition linguistics research, and digital media technologies, the Advanced Identity Representation (AIR) Project develops theory and technology for users to represent complex, dynamic social identities in digital media such as virtual worlds and social networking sites. Here, ...

This article offers a short account of historical differences in the evolution of American and Canadian national identities, noting that both countries present textbook cases of the familiar theoretical concepts of constructed identities, invented traditions and imagined communities. It then takes a brief look at cross-border cultural politics, policy and media trade practicies, before finally ...

The growth of distance education warrants a closer look at how virtual communities of practice form in asynchronous online classrooms. Prior studies have sought to identify a process to virtual community formation, which may vary depending upon the media used for collaboration. This microstudy examines how one student group in a distance writing course used the popular social media site Faceboo...

The growing use of the Internet to provide a sense of personal connection and community is converging with the development of shared virtual spaces. In particular, the strong popularity of Multi-User Domains (MUDs), text-based networked virtual worlds, suggests the high premium many people place on social interactivity in their virtual environments. The project described in this paper was desig...

The long-term viability of virtual communities depends critically on contribution behavior by their members. We deepen and extend prior research by conceptualizing contributions to virtual communities in terms of small friendship group–referent intentional actions. Specifically, we investigate cognitive, emotional, and social determinants of shared we-intentions and their consequences for membe...

The lack of available identity information in attribute-based trust management systems complicates the design of the audit and incident response systems, anomaly detection algorithms, collusion detection/prevention mechanisms, and reputation systems taken for granted in traditional distributed systems. In this paper, we show that as two entities in an attribute-based trust management system int...

The spread of advanced information technologies introduced a broader conception of identity, which now includes the representation of people in the virtual environment. As a result, today we can see that identity can be defined both in technology and sociology-oriented terms. Different organisations assign identities to the individuals they interact with and manage them by means of technical so...