Online / Virtual Communities

• Causing revival / rise in community participation?
  • (Draw from ICS 668) Virtual Communities, compared to traditional communities.  Community participation dropped off in the 70s / 80s, but is somewhat recovering due to virtual communities.  The convenience of online, asynchronous communities is making this possible.  ….
     
• Assessing Trust and Identity
  • (Continuation of ICS 668 / Suthers):  How do we assess trust of other people (identity) when we are online?  How can we tell when we are being deceived by others, and how can we protect ourselves / be safe with our / others online identity?
     
• Using Affect / Emotion through non-verbal communication to rise communication effectiveness
  • (Draw from Dr. Aune / Joe Walther, etc) Non-verbal communication, how it manifests itself online via emoticons, other cues.  How we might raise non-verbal communication online so that communication can be more effective?

Introduction to General Area:

(Insert Preece / Carroll chapters here)

 

Specific Areas of Interest:

see questions above

Questions I want to Investigate:

Research Methods to use when Investigating:

- naturalistic observation... etc.

Faculty at UH that could support this topic:

Dr. Suthers (CSCW, DCog), Dr. Aune (Comm theory / relational Comm), Dr. Kunimoto & Dr. Fontaine (Intercultural Comm)

Who are the big players in this field, and what topics are they researching?

Dr. Suthers:  Online collaboration, CSCW