[Air-l] Re: Lurking

[Uwe Matzat]

I am busy wading through my saved emails - that's the reason I 
react so lately to the thread on lurking in electronic group 
discussions. 

In December I finished my Ph.D. thesis at the Department of 
Sociology, University of Groningen (the Netherlands) which is of 
interest for those analyzing 'lurking' or active participation in 
electronic discussions. 

The thesis contributes to answering the question under which 
conditions some electronic groups on the Internet reach a high 
degree of active member participation (posting) in group 
discussions while other Internet groups fail to involve many 
members. 

The focus is more on structural properties of the electronic group 
(e.g. does it stimulate the discussion if an electronic group is 
embedded in face-to-face networks of researchers?) than on 
properties of individuals (e.g. does it stimulate the discussion if a 
member is an altruist?)  that faciliate the involvement of members 
in group discussions.

You don't have to read the whole book. In chapters 5 and 6 of the 
book, three models for explaining the active participation of 
researchers in discussions of academic mailing lists are presented 
and empirically tested. These models rely on three different basic 
arguments about which incentives influence the provision of help 
and information in discussions of electronic groups: 

1. a hope for reciprocity 
2. the goal to obtain some status in the research community 
3. the goal to make new contacts to other researchers

Since these models are instruments for finding out what are crucial 
structural properties, they leave out ideas about altruistic 
motivations, like group attachment etc, that could stimulate group 
discussions. 

Matzat, U. (2001). Social Networks and Cooperation in Electronic 
Communities. A theoretical-empirical Analysis of Academic 
Communication and Internet Discussion Groups. Amsterdam: 
Thela Publishers (ISBN 90-367-1541-5) 

The models make use of economic price-theory in a very simple 
way, so that the reasoning and results are understandable for 
Internet researcher who may not be  familiar with micro-economics. 

By the way, the book is also online available at the university 
library of the University of Groningen :-):

http://www.ub.rug.nl/eldoc/dis/ppsw/u.matzat/

Best wishes,
Uwe
PS: The project information on my web-site is not yet up-dated. I 
am sorry!

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Uwe Matzat
Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS)
Department of Sociology
University of Groningen
Grote Rozenst. 31
9712 TG Groningen
The Netherlands
u.matzat at ppsw.rug.nl
Social Networks and Academic Internet Discussion Groups:
http://www2.ppsw.rug.nl/~matzat
Tel: +31/50/3636237 (NL) or +49/2841/173112 (GER)
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