Developing Commitment to an Online Community
Speaker
Robert Kraut and Xiaoqing Wang
Herbert Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University / Phd student Information Systems Katz School of Business, University of Pittsburgh
When
-
Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)
Description
Individuals are more willing to join a group and to participate actively if they think it can provide them more benefits than alternate uses of their time. They use their initial interactions with other members as evidence to predict future benefit. This talk examines how the initial conversations individuals have with others in an online group influence their commitment to the group. It also examines how competition from other online groups occupying a similar niche threatens that commitment.
Speaker's Bio
Dr. Kraut has broad interests in the design and social impact of computing and has conducted empirical research on office automation and employment quality, technology and home-based employment, the communication needs of collaborating scientists, the design of information technology for small-group intellectual work, and the impact of national information networks on organizations and families.
His research in specific areas examines in detail the challenges groups currently have in performing social tasks, designs new technology to meet some of these challenges, and evaluates the usefulness of the new technology. This cycle of needs assessment, technological design, and evaluation has both scholarly and applied products. His work on video systems for informal communication and technology for allocating human attention follows this model.
He also conducts research on the role that nationwide computer networks, including the Internet, have on the interrelationships among firms and on the dynamics of the family. These networks increase the efficiency with which firms can search for or exchange information with each other, but they also shift the type of information that can easily exchanged, from personal to quantitative. The research examines how these shifts in the cost and quality of communication may influence inter-firm loyalties and market relationships. At the level of the family, the research examines how easy access to remote and personalized information sources and communication partners changes the family’s dependence on local resources, among other topics.
He wrote a biographical essay, Re-engineering social encounters, in 2003 for the American Psychological Association.
Xiaoqing Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in MIS at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests focus on the dynamics of both the behavioral and technical aspects of different types of online communities in various contexts.