Communication posted to backbone mailing list February 18, Baker, P. Barron, M. Kimmel CrossRef Google Scholar. Baym, N. The emergence of on-line community. Bellovin, S. Communication posted to usenet. Benson, T. Bijker, W. Hughes, et al. The Social construction of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, Mass. Bumgarner, L. The Great Renaming: — Campbell, K.
Cunneen, C. Stubbs Cushing, P. Dahlgren, P. Media, Citizenship and Civic Culture. Mass Media and Society. Curran, and Gurevitch, Michael, London, Arnold: — Damphousse, K.
Smith Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage. Harvey W. Ed: — Daniel, S. David, J. Dery, M. Flame wars: the discourse of cyberculture. Durkin, K. R and C. Bryant Engelen-Eigles, D. Foreman, M. Offensive Intruder Poisons Chat Lines. Gaiser, T. Gardinali, P. American Sociological Association, Gebis, J. How to Receive Banned Newsgroups. Harmon, D. Her suggestion is to post a message asking if a specific commercial post would be acceptable to participants prior to posting the commercial article.
Using newsgroups can be a simple and rewarding method of finding out more about industry and competition. Used with sensitivity and purpose, they can also serve as an inexpensive path to marketing, sales, and business opportunities for a small business. Another tool that may offer similar opportunities, again, if used with sensitivity and frankness, is the blog. The term blog is a truncated version of the earlier weblog.
A blog is basically a journal that is published on the Web. The activity of updating a blog is called "blogging" and the person who keeps a blog is a "blogger. Another key component of blogs is that they link to other sites and blogs.
In this way, bloggers communicate with one another, establish online communities, and comment on topics and subject in the news. In , the first blogs appeared, still called weblogs at the time. There were, in , a few hundred such sites but software came out that same year which made it much easier to create a blog and the number of blogs began to grow rapidly.
Although nobody knows for sure how many blogs exist, all estimates place the number in the millions as of early , 27 million according to Forrester Research. The community of bloggers, the blogosphere, is large and growing. This has tempted businesses to try and take advantage of this new community to reach out through it to potential customers. Although blogs by their very nature occupy a noncommercial Web space, many believe that businesses may be able to use blogs to establish a communications avenue with customers and reach those who influence opinion through popular blogs.
So far, there are few business blogs but that is changing quickly. Through a blog a business can disseminate information about its products and services, gather opinions from customers and try to mold brand awareness through interaction with popular well read blogs.
But, as Ben King explains in an article on the subject published in The Financial Times , making a weblog or blog is not simply a matter of sticking the word blog at the top of a column of chatty copy on a normal business Web site.
Blogs are more complicated vehicles. Of course, these tools do not guarantee a successful blogging project. No one will read a blog that is not interesting, and no software yet devised can guarantee that.
The rapid spontaneous back and forth discourse of the blogosphere is not an easy fit with the slow, cautious approach favored by most corporate marketing departments. Blogging is still relatively young. Whether it develops as a useful new tool for business entities has yet to be determined.
Blogging is, however, something that entrepreneurs should follow as an interesting online development and one that may become useful in a business's effort to reach out to its clients. And, many companies are profiting from the blogosphere already, by teaching other companies how to use blogs. Forrester Research, for example, offers a two-day seminar on the subject. They explain the need to learn about blogs this way: "As customers increasingly tune out traditional advertising and turn to new communication channels to fill the void, companies must learn how to join in the conversation.
Moreover, besides connecting companies and their customers, blogs are also becoming an invaluable collaboration tool within companies to facilitate knowledge management and cross-functional communications.
Blood, Rabecca. Perseus Books Group, Retrieved on 13 April The chi-square goodness of fit statistic for the hypothesized model is However, this value, which indicates that the original and reproduced matrix do differ, may be inflated due to non-normally distributed data.
The goodness of fit index GFI is. Steiger suggests reporting the root means square error of approximation RMSEA because it measures lack of fit due to the true difference, versus sampling error, between the original and reproduced covariance matrix. The NFI, which tests the hypothesized model versus a baseline null model in which all variables are uncorrelated, is. An NFI greater than. The PFI, which accounts for the degrees of freedom given the number of hypothesized paths, is.
However, this low PFI can be explained by two non-significant paths, as discussed below. Schumacker and Lomax also suggest checking the expected cross validation index ECVI , which measures the fit function if the model were cross validated on a separate independent sample. ECVI is. It could be argued, as noted by one reviewer, that two of the four behavioral change items deal with the result of being in the discussion group, whereas the other two items deal with group influence.
To account for this possible distinction, the former two items were deleted and the revised model was rerun. The results did not substantially differ in terms of models fit, parameter values, or hypothesized results.
Figure 1 contains the structural model with the parameter values. The correlation between interaction and observation frequency is -. Consumers with a greater sense of group membership place more value on information from the discussion group. Lurking behavior, indicated by observation frequency, is unrelated to perceived membership, whereas posting behavior, indicated by interaction frequency, is positively related to perceived membership.
These results indicate that consumers who are active participants in Usenet groups feel a stronger sense of membership than less active observers. More active users are more apt to: post to the group, see themselves as members, and value and act on the information from the group.
Thus, membership perception does affect behavior, albeit indirectly. Observation frequency does not affect membership perception, possibly as noted earlier because those who primarily observe group discussions may feel like distant outsiders who are watching interaction. Thus, future research is needed to determine if those who are primarily lurkers in contrast to primarily posters feel less involved with the topic and other on-line personae, participate out of curiosity or a desire to find specific and limited information, and are less interested in building social ties with other members.
Membership perception is indirectly related to behavioral changes. This result is consistent with the idea that Usenet groups serve informational roles, do not primarily act as normative reference groups, and diverge from traditional community. This divergence is reflected in a less group focused orientation and greater individual consciousness than might be expected in traditional community.
The indirect link between membership perception and behavioral changes may be explained by research on social versus informational involvement in Usenet groups. Social influence is typically strongest in situations in which consumers physically observe and interact with each other Grossbart, Mittelstaedt, and Murdock Thus, influences on behavior may be less socially driven and more informationally driven in a Usenet group, as indicated by the low negative parameter value between membership perception and behavioral changes.
An implication is that although Usenet culture tends to reject advertising and selling Shirky , perceived membership indirectly affects consumer behaviors via information exchange. These results indicate that more active users place the most value on group information and are most apt use it to modify their behaviors. Research may reveal that opinion leaders, or Usenet topic experts, spread positive or negative information which is valued by others Granitz and Ward This study can be strengthened and extended in a number of ways.
Although the nature of the sample potentially creates self-selection bias, the variance in responses was sufficient to support predicted relationships, and mean responses on behavioral change items were not unduly high. Still, a larger random sample may avoid other undetected potential complications associated witha small convenience sample. The sample composition and size are a function of the medium.
Those who primarily lurk come and go while those who primarily post are fewer in number and more permanent McLaughlin et al. Because the survey was posted once, the number of lurkers available during that period was limited, and the results may reflect method variance since the data were collected in a single administration.
With more research on Internet use, effective methods for obtaining large random samples will be developed and permit evaluation of stability of parameter estimates. Longitudinal analysis will also be useful to verify causality e. Because of chi-square inflation due to non-normal distribution of the data, the model should be cross-validated on other samples. As more theory is developed about on-line groups, other models should be tested.
Tests may reveal similar results or the need for separate models based on a typology of Usenet groups. For example, cross-validation may suggest that less product-based groups which focus on social topics e. The model may also be extended by examining how simultaneous versus sequential communication modes alter membership perceptions and behaviors.
Besides work with other Usenet samples, it will be useful to study social forces in groups in terms of other theories e.
Scales in this study were designed to be unidimensional. In the confirmatory analysis, one measure did not load on the observation frequency factor, and was removed on empirical and theoretical grounds. Such modification should be viewed with skepticism, and more scale validation should be done. The behavioral change scale was designed as a global indicator to examine a general relationship between perceived membership and consumer behavior.
As more research is done on Usenet groups, this measure can be refined to include specific behaviors affected by membership and information value.
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