Community Nurturing ( Task 8.3) Social Network Analysis Approach (D8.8)

1. Community Nurturing (Task 8.3)Social Network Analysis Approach (D8.8) WP 8

2. Outline • Theory for online communication – Communities of Practice • Conditions for establishing communities of practice • Social Network Analysis • SNA measures • SNA enhanced techniques • Approach for SNA in GaLA

3. Communities of Practice • “Communities of Practice (CoP) are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (Wenger, 2008) • A CoP is an activity system in which individuals are united in action and the meaning that the actions have for them (Ardichvili, Page, & Wentling, 2003). • CoP provide a foundation for production and sharing of knowledge

4. Establishing Communities of Practice • Identification of stakeholders • People with experience and knowledge on the topic have to be present • 20:80 rule - peripheral participants, the long-tail (Anderson, 2003) • Common recognized and shared needs and a belief in long term profitability of stakeholders

5. Establishing Communities of Practice • Engagement • Very challenging, but crucial for success (allows the exchange of tacit knowledge) • Conditions for promotion and stimulation of engagement • Self-reflection and self-observation • Promote sharing of knowledge as a public good • Effect of recommendations from influential contacts • Trust in the way knowledge is used or disseminated by procedures of knowledge or trusted members

6. Establishing Communities of Practice • Network management • Stimulate sharing • Instigate agreement • Need for leadership: especially important in the early stages of community development. If no leader is appointed the community itself will set out and find one (Laghos & Zaphiris, 2006) • Balance between support (guidelines and regulations) and freedom ( evolving interests and circumstances that help the community to develop)

7. Social Network Analysis • SNA Measures • Clustering • Connectivity • Centrality • Network characteristics • Strength of the weak ties • Small world; six degrees of separation • Enhanced SNA techniques • Recommender systems • Collaborative filtering • Content based recommendation

8. Approach for SNA in GaLA Community lifecycle

9. Approach for SNA in GaLA • SNA for the Potential Stage • Connect people with similar interests (look at the profile information) • Check how the different stakeholders are represented and take adequate measures • Support engagement by motivating sharing • SNA for the Coalescing Stage • Detect clustering and subgroups and the level of communication between these • Use collaborative filtering and content-based recommendation to enhance engagement by recommending suitable contacts and content

10. Approach for SNA in GaLA • SNA for the Active Stage • Measure engagement by keeping track of the quantity of members’ contributions (blog posts, comments, rating) and the rate of information flow • Detect the ‘central’ people and support them in case the burden of managing the network increases • Use content analysis to study the relation between the content generated and the relation between content authors • Data needed • User profile: • information about interests and roles (e.g. researcher in a private company) • Common anagraphic data (age, gender)

11. Approach for SNA in GaLA • Data needed • User profile: • information about interests and roles (e.g. researcher in a private company) • Common anagraphic data (age, gender) • Role and affiliation to detect belonging to a particular stakeholder group • Interest to suggest similar community member • The social links (friend/follower) • All user-generated content • Blog posts • Comments • Rating • Tagging