The overwhelming acceptance of online groups is evidenced by the tremendous quantity of activity and the size of the archives of these groups (in the range of a terabyte or more). People are turning to newsgroups for emotional support, for information, for social engagement and for facilitation of task performance. The PI's long-term objective is to make that experience of the best quality possible. To that end, in this project the PI will carry out a preliminary study of a large database of newsgroups from NetScan in order to use a large population to verify her findings in a small pilot study previously conducted, whose goal was to discover some characteristics of online communities. Results of the pilot study indicate that new participants in newsgroups are more likely to participate a second time if they receive a response to their first posting, and they are also more likely to post multiple messages if they receive a response. Apparently, based on the findings of the small study, emotional quality of the first posting or its response bears no impact on future participation, but if the first posting requests something of the group, the poster of that message is more likely to post at least once more. This project will re-examine these findings, as well as endeavor to refine aspects of community formation and maintenance in online groups by running statistical analyses of these variables in the larger database.
Broader Impacts: Newsgroups are still a relatively new phenomenon, which is attracting research attention but only on a fairly small scale. An analysis of a large database of newsgroup features and activity may provide results that could change how online communities are perceived. This project will attempt to define online communities in ways that look for differences from and similarities with face-to-face ones. Doing so will permit the design of newsgroups to reflect more closely the needs of the group, as well as of individual participants, in order to enhance their experience and solidify community formation and maintenance.
