Rethinking the Fragmentation of the Cyberpublic: From Consensus to Contestation    

Recently there has been some debate between deliberative democrats about whether the internet is leading to the fragmentation of communication into `like-minded' groups.This article is concerned with what is held in common by both sides of the debate: a public sphere model that aims for all-inclusive, consensus seeking rational deliberation that eliminates inter-group 'polarizing' politics. It argues that this understanding of deliberative democracy fails to adequately consider the asymmetries of power through which deliberation and consensus are achieved, the inter-subjective basis of meaning, the centrality of respect for difference in democracy, and the democratic role of `like-minded' deliberative groups. The deliberative public sphere must be rethought to account more fully for these four aspects. The article draws on post-Marxist discourse theory and reconceptualizes the public sphere as a space constituted through discursive contestation.Taking this radicalized norm, it considers what research is needed to understand the democratic implications of the formation of 'like-minded' groups online.

Dahlberg, Lincoln. New Media and Society (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Theory

An Exploration of Concepts of Community Through a Case Study of UK University Web Production    

The paper explores the interrelation and differences between the concepts of occupational community, community of practice, online community and social network. It uses as a case study illustration the domain of UK university web site production and specifically a listserv for those involved in it. Different latent occupational communities are explored, and the potential for the listserv to help realize these as an active sense of community is considered. The listserv is not (for most participants) a tight knit community of practice, indeed it fails many criteria for an online community. It is perhaps best conceived as a loose knit network of practice, valued for information, implicit support and for the maintenance of weak ties. Through the analysis the case for using strict definitions of the theoretical concepts is made.

Cox, Andrew M. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Academic

The Dilemma of Comments

Abuse has made me seriously consider – several times – disabling comments. I’m ambivalent about it. On the one hand it would make writing and publishing much easier. Write something, proofread it, publish.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Interaction Design

Join the (User) Group

Here’s a complaint I’ve heard from most of the technical writers I’ve met: “I never get to meet my users.” User input helps us decide what content to include and in what form, and can confirm whether our books are effective. But getting user input can be difficult—at least I thought so, until I discovered a fun way to meet hundreds of users each year.

Heninger, Barbara L. Indus (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Community Building>Audience Analysis

Facebook Groups vs. Facebook Pages

Many nonprofit early adopters of Facebook set up groups as their organizational hubs because that was the only option. Later, Facebook Pages were introduced and many nonprofits have set these up as their institutional hubs. There has been some discussion in nonprofit forums, blogs, and listservs about the pros and cons of Facebook Pages versus Groups. Below are the notes I've drafted on the topic so far.

Davies, Tim. Tim's Blog (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

How and Why to Build an Online Community

A community has to be grown wild and organically or it will fail. Control comes with time and growth. The success of a community and its size may vary. The effort may not give expected results but the work still pays off in knowledge and experience. Community members will change and accept different roles and participate in different manners. Being user friendly and being willing to allow change to happen is most important.

Hiveminds (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Why Are Online Communities So Popular?

In An exploration of the internet publishing revolution, I discussed the implications of the increased self-publishing on the web. The discussion covered general concerns and possible impacts of the sudden growth, but not the reasons behind it. What has prompted the expansion of people’s voice on the web? Where have these communities of bloggers and posters come from? Why have they arisen? In this article I intend to find answers to these questions and ask: ‘What makes online communities so popular?’

Mercurytide (2006). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Six Steps to Effective Discussion Forums on your Intranet

When you have a small base of users (say, under 10,000), everything has to be perfect to create effective discussion forums. Here are 6 guidelines.

McGrath, Chris. One Intranets (2006). Articles>Content Management>Community Building>Intranets

Deepening Online Conversation: How and Why to Use a Common Referent to Connect Learners with Diverse Local Practices  

In this article, the authors argue that online learning conversations need to go beyond the common “information exchange” to a deeper level of interaction in order to help learners build situated knowledge that is useful in their local contexts. The article begins by looking at the commonly-used framework of a Community of Practice (CoP) and in particular, the challenges that designers can expect to encounter when knowledge building moves online, and conversants do not have a shared practice. The authors explain why this is problematic in terms of having insufficient grounding for the conversation and describe how online designers can compensate for the lack of shared practice by providing a common referent. Finally, the authors discuss three considerations that online designers should take into account in crafting a common referent (the richness of representation provided, the domain specificity required, and how the referent is conceptually framed) and explore their implications for both formal and informal learning environments.

Wise, Alyssa, Thomas Duffy and Poornima Padmanabhan. Educational Technology Publications (2008). Academic>Collaboration>Community Building>Participatory Design

Communities, Audiences, and Scale

Communities are different than audiences in fundamental human ways, not merely technological ones. You cannot simply transform an audience into a community with technology, because they assume very different relationships between the sender and receiver of messages.

Shirky, Clay. Shirky.com (2002). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Online

Caught in the Current of Writer River: Building and Participating in Community-Driven Websites    

When hundreds of people engage in content-generation and exchange, impressive results can happen — namely, you find a lot of interesting, accurate content. Writer River doesn’t have nearly enough community to be on par with these sites, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Johnson, Tom H. Intercom (2009). Articles>Content Management>Community Building>Taxonomy

Embracing the Un: When the Community Runs the Event    

With the explosion of Web 2.0 come two new kinds of community events: BarCamps and BookSprints. Gentle and Swisher share their experiences with these unconferences.

Gentle, Anne and Janet Swisher. Intercom (2009). Articles>TC>Community Building>Social Networking

Keep Your Web 2.0 Community Happy

Running a web community can be fun and rewarding, but you’re always reliant on the good faith of your members. So what happens when rogue elements threaten to disrupt, even destroy, the foundations of your virtual society? Derek Powazek has some suggestions

Powazek, Derek. Dot Net (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Twitter Is What You Make It

There’s nothing quite like Twitter. It’s a Web site where you can broadcast very short messages — 140 characters, max — to anyone who’s signed up to receive them. It’s like a cross between a blog and a chat room.

Pogue, David. New York Times, The (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

What I've Learned as a Member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC)

In all, my experiences volunteering in the STC Carolina chapter have been very rewarding. I recommend dipping your toes in the water and trying something out. Email or call someone on the administrative council and ask what needs to be done. Start small. You might be surprised at the return on investment.

Loring, Sheila. Scriptorium (2009). Articles>Advice>Community Building>STC

UX Book Club

A UX (User Experience) Book Club is a get-together in which people interested in the area of user experience come to discuss a book relevant to the discipline. In keeping with the book-club theme the location would be somewhere like a wine bar or a bookstore. The important thing is that the noise level has to be low, and be able to accommodate a group of 15-30 people.

UX Book Club. Organizations>User Experience>Community Building

Best Practices for Designing a Social News Website

In this article I’ll showcase some of the current top social news sites, will identify trends and patterns in their designs and suggest some best practices to follow when designing such sites. Let’s begin by looking at four popular social news sites and see how their designs compare.

Fadeyev, Dmitry. Webdesigner Depot (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Eight Things I Learnt About Using Twitter as a Participation Tool: Speaking About Presenting

I presented a session remotely at the Presentation Camp at Stanford University, California. My session was on “How to engage your audience with Twitter” and I tried to do exactly that during my presentation. Here’s what I learnt from my experience.

Mitchell, Olivia. Speaking About Presenting (2009). Articles>Presentations>Community Building>Social Networking

Coaching a Community

We’ve all been part of communities since kindergarten, or earlier. Churches, schools, sports teams, and neighborhoods all satisfy basic human desires to interact with others and work toward a common goal. And yet, when these communities are online and we start to think of them as “social sites,” these concepts can suddenly feel foreign. My work in communities (primarily as the editor of community-created magazine JPG) has shown me that different sets of people are usually motivated in similar ways. Most people have an innate need to belong and feel like part of something, and successfully contributing to that something can really reinforce self-worth. Whether you’re at a company such as Yelp working with product reviews, or Threadless working with t-shirts, or in a church group working on an annual recipe book, try some of these methods to nurture great content.

Miner, Laura Brunow. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

The Elements of Social Architecture

Humans can behave in surprising ways when you bring them together. In an information space, a human’s needs are simple and his behavior straightforward. Find. Read. Save. But once you get a bunch of humans together, communicating and collaborating, you can observe both the madness and the wisdom of crowds.

Wodtke, Christina. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking