Online Social Networks to Support Community Collaboration Workshop

Online Social Networks to Support Community Collaboration Workshop
Connie White and Linda Plotnick
connie.m.white@gmail.com , linda.plotnick@gmail.com
7/21/2009
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Online Social Networks to Support Community Collaboration

Introduction Outline
Introduction
Social Networks
Virtual Organizations
Communities of Practice
Technology Acceptance Model
Social Media for Emergency Management
What does the future hold? http://www.twitter.com/iranelection
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Introduction
The aim of this workshop is to examine:
The possibilities and potential applications Online Social Networking Sites have for communities in a variety of complex problem domains.
How communities can transfer their needs to an online environment is underexplored and is the scope of this workshop.
How communities and organizations are using these networks to replace and augment traditional avenues of communication,
The types of communities that may benefit the most, and
What untapped functionalities may exist. What does the future hold for SNS? Will SNS change the way we work in the future?
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Social Networks defined
“a set of people (or organizations or other social entities) connected by a set of social relationships, such as friendship, co-working or information exchange” (p.2).
Garton, L. Haythornthwaite, C. and Wellman, B. Studying Online Social Networks. JCMC 3 (1) June 1997.
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Applicable in Social As Well As in Information Systems
“Virtual organization integrates and generalizes several specialized constructs useful in the design of computer systems and networks. Virtual memory, virtual machines, and virtual circuit routing are well-known examples; less evident perhaps is that virtual reality also belongs to this family of constructs. But virtual organization has an even wider scope, in that it is also useful in modeling social systems.” (p32)
Mowshowitz, Abbe. Communications of the ACM Volume 40 , Issue 9 Pages: 30 - 37 , 1997
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Communities of Practice
Defined by Wenger,
“Communities of practice are groups of people
who share a concern, a set of problems, or a
passion about a topic, and who deepen their
knowledge and expertise in this area by
interacting on an ongoing basis.”
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. And Snyder, W.
“Cultivating Communities of Practice”, Havard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2002.
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Updated Definition for SNS
“We characterize a social network as links from people to other people, groups or information objects. Such objects may be messages, photos, videos, wall postings, notifications, current activities, events, widgets, etc. Such links might be created by intelligent agents or by the users. A wall posting is a public communication, like a blog, associated with a SNS individual member or group.”
White, C., Plotnick, L., Kushma, J., Hiltz, S.R., and Turoff, M. (2009) An Online Social Network for Emergency Management, ISCRAM.
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Technology Acceptance Model
One theory that explains the explosion of use of social media.
Venkatesh, V., Morris, M. G., Davis, G. B., & Davis, F. D. (2003). User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view. MIS Quarterly, (27:3), 425-478.
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The Design of an Online Social Network Site for Emergency Management: A One-Stop Shop
AMCIS, 2009.
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Online Social Network for Emergency Management
Damage assessment and disaster intelligence
Citizen engagement or citizen input
Collaborative exercise design and development
Collaborative problem solving
Training or exchange of training material
Consultation for real-time decision making
Best practices exchange
Planning or exchange of planning material
Peer exchanges among and with CERT members
New document evaluation and review
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Barriers To Use
The need to verify and “scrub” the data,
The need to bridge cultural differences to enable collaboration,
The need to avoid information overload,
The need for reliability and accessibility, and
The need to attract users (in particular emergency managers).
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Objectives of Workshop
What functionality would be required,
What issues (and how to overcome them) exist that can impede their use.
Explore the potential use of Online Social Networking to support more complex entities in the future and forecast what potential they hold for domains and uses not yet envisioned
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