In the current Web 2.0 environment there is high expectation that libraries and IT service providers will embrace online technologies to connect with and engage their users. Some libraries, for example, have reported on their implementation of technologies to develop online communities; however there is a much greater potential to utilise this approach than is generally appreciated within both ...

Online communities are increasingly becoming a venue for socializing, engaging in politics, and conducting business. Ironically, the same enabling social–media technology is encroaching into everyday life and reconfiguring relations of participation. Yet, while participation in online communities has been widely studied empirically, theoretical aspects of this social phenomenon need further inv...

Although continuous knowledge sharing behaviour is acknowledged as important by scholars, the understanding of what influence this continuous behaviour remains limited. Thus, this paper fills the gap by examining the mediating role of identification trust and affective commitment on members’ continuous knowledge sharing intention within business online communities. 220 experienced online commun...

Online social networking is increasingly popular and is a feature of many websites. Providing multiple types of relationship, such as friend, fan or colleague, can enhance the significance of the networks. We present an empirical study of an online political forum where users engage in content creation, voting, and discussion. The users also make explicit connections via three relationship type...

This paper aims at showing how beneficial it is to use an analysis grid as a guide to evaluate the dynamics of an online community and, on the basis of this grid, to develop agent-based models to explore each of the dimensions characterizing online communities within this grid. Several models from different perspectives have been proposed to study the dynamics of online communities (socio-techn...

BACKGROUND The importance of community engagement in health is widely recognized, and key themes in UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommendations for enhancing community engagement are co-production and community control. This study reports an innovative approach to community engagement using the community-organizing methodology, applied in an intervention of s...

An ever-growing number of users participate in online communities such as Flickr, del.icio.us , and YouTube , making friends and sharing content. Users come to these sites to find out about general trends – the most popular tags, or the most recently tagged item – as well as for more specific information, such as the recent posts of one of their friends. While these activities correspond to dif...

Online communities (OCs) have been studied for the past several decades by many scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds. It is found that the success of an OC largely depends on its members’ participation and contribution behaviour. While significant research has examined the factors affecting participation in various OC types ranging from online communities of practice to online so...

the street garment vendors are playing a significant role in the fields of the economic development through protecting resources (garment products) from such a position where they are treated as wastes; very much less valued products and creating the opportunity for self-employment. this study aimed at showing the economic contribution and the impact of the street vendors to the local community...