Article

The active lurker: influence of an in-house online community on its outside environment

Authors:

Masamichi Takahashi,

Masakazu Fujimoto,

Nobuhiro YamasakiAuthors Info & Claims

GROUP '03: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work

Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/958160.958162

Published: 09 November 2003 Publication History

Abstract

In this study, we focus on participants called lurkers, who do not post any messages in an online community such as interactive mailing lists and bulletin board systems. We propose a method of classifying participants including lurkers based on two criteria: what types of actions they take outside the online community, and whether or not the online community affects their thoughts. In addition, based on the results of interviews, we propose hypotheses regarding factors that characterize the categories of lurkers. We conduct a questionnaire survey of all participants in two in-house online communities to verify our method and test the hypotheses. There are a considerable number of lurkers who have a strong and wide influence outside the online community. We conclude that such lurkers cannot be neglected in an evaluation of online communities within a company. We also discuss the possibility of online community management by focusing on not only posters but also lurkers who are indirect contributors to increasing the influence of an online community on its outside environment.

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Index Terms

The active lurker: influence of an in-house online community on its outside environment

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

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 ...
The active lurker: influence of an in-house online community on its outside environment[1] (abstract only)

In this study, we focus on participants called lurkers, who do not post any messages in an online community such as interactive mailing lists and bulletin board systems. We propose a method of classifying participants including lurkers based on two ...
The active lurker: a new viewpoint for evaluating the influence of an in-house online community

In this study, we focus on participants called lurkers, who do not post any messages in an online community such as interactive mailing lists and bulletin board systems. We propose a method of classifying participants including lurkers based on two ...

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cover image ACM Conferences

GROUP '03: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work

November 2003

390 pages

ISBN:1581136935

DOI:10.1145/958160

Conference Chairs:
Kjeld Schmidt
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
,
Mark Pendergast
Florida Gulf Coast University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Marilyn Tremaine
New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
,
Carla Simone
Universita' di Milano Bicocca, Italy

Copyright © 2003 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: 09 November 2003

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November 9 - 12, 2003

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05927-4
Shiozu YArai SAso HYoshida SInaba IShimohara K(2024)Social Network Structure and Lurker OriginsHuman Interface and the Management of Information10.1007/978-3-031-60125-5_25(366-381)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60125-5_25
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https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13030270
Zhu JDawson K(2023)Differences in sense of community and participation between lurkers and posters in informal online education-related communitiesBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2023.219657143:5(929-942)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2023.2196571
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