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Lurker demographics: counting the silent

Authors:

Blair Nonnecke,

Jenny PreeceAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '00: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 73 - 80

https://doi.org/10.1145/332040.332409

Published: 01 April 2000 Publication History

Abstract

As online groups grow in number and type, understanding lurking is becoming increasingly important. Recent reports indicate that lurkers make up over 90% of online groups, yet little is known about them.

This paper presents a demographic study of lurking in email-based discussion lists (DLs) with an emphasis on health and software-support DLs. Four primary questions are examined. One, how prevalent is lurking, and do health and software-support DLs differ? Two, how do lurking levels vary as the definition is broadened from zero posts in 12 weeks to 3 or fewer posts in 12 weeks? Three, is there a relationship between lurking and the size of the DL, and four, is there a relationship between lurking and traffic level?

When lurking is defined as no posts, the mean lurking level for all DLs is lower than the reported 90%. Health-support DLs have on average significantly fewer lurkers (46%) than software-support DLs (82%). Lurking varies widely ranging from 0 to 99%. The relationships between lurking, group size and traffic are also examined.

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Cited By

White SXu QIlobinso AYan WDong LZhang ZBabalola AKoehler A(2024)Empathy-Driven Instructional Design in Asynchronous Online DiscussionsHumanizing Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education10.4018/979-8-3693-0762-5.ch005(91-114)Online publication date: 29-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-0762-5.ch005
Demir G(2024)Dijital Ortamda Kültürel İnşa: “Pir Yolu” Forum Üzerine Etnografik Bir İncelemeKültür ve İletişim10.18691/kulturveiletisim.147155527:54(377-406)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.18691/kulturveiletisim.1471555
Popowski LZhang YBernstein M(2024)Commit: Online Groups with Participation CommitmentsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36870278:CSCW2(1-28)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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Index Terms

Lurker demographics: counting the silent
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
2. Information systems
  1. World Wide Web
    1. Web applications
      1. Internet communications tools

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '00: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2000

587 pages

ISBN:1581132166

DOI:10.1145/332040

Chairmen:
Thea Turner
Motorola Labs
,
Gerd Szwillus
Univ. of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany

Copyright © 2000 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 01 April 2000

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April 1 - 6, 2000

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https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-0762-5.ch005
Demir G(2024)Dijital Ortamda Kültürel İnşa: “Pir Yolu” Forum Üzerine Etnografik Bir İncelemeKültür ve İletişim10.18691/kulturveiletisim.147155527:54(377-406)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.18691/kulturveiletisim.1471555
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687027
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