Online Communities

• A comprehensive guide to online communities-how they develop and how they impact e-commerce, culture, politics, and education
• Why some online communities thrive-and others fail
• Contributors include Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation

Coverage includes:

• Leading models and key lessons for organizers of online communities
• Corporate-sponsored online communities: social impacts and success factors
• Building alliances between diverse online communities
• Uses of online communities worldwide: the U.S., Great Britain, Mexico, France, Italy, Bosnia, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, and elsewhere
• Distance learning: the promise and the reality
• Richard Stallman on how online communities can democratize universities
• Randy Connolly on why online communities may actually decrease social cohesion

Contents

Part I: Commercial Online Communities

1: Imagined Electronic Community: Representations of Online Community in Business Texts by Chris Werry

2: Three Case Studies by Janelle Brown

3: Cookies, Gift-Giving, and Online Communities by Hillary Bays and Miranda Mowbray

4: Computer Networks Linking Network Communities by Robin B. Hamman

5: Reducing Demographic Bias by Miranda Mowbray

Part II: Educational Online Communities

6: Education, Communication, and Consumption: Piping in the Academic Community by Norman Clark

7: Building a Virtual University: Working Realities from the Virginia Tech Cyberschool by Timothy W. Luke

8: Outsourcing Education, Managing Knowledge, and Strengthening Academic Communities by Joanne Addison

9: Respecting the Virtual Subject, or How to Navigate the Private/Public Continuum by Maria Bakardjieva and Andrew Feenberg

10: Community, Courseware, and Intellectual Property Law by Geoffrey Sauer

11: The Red Escolar Project Considered As an Online Community by Walter Aprile and Teresa Vazquez Mantec-n

12: The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource by Richard Stallman

13: Afterword: Blood and Dreams in Cyberspace by Cary Nelson

Part III: Alternative Online Communities

14: What Kind of Platform for Change? Democracy, Community Work, and the Internet by Douglas Schuler

15: Oxfam GB Interviews: Experience and Thoughts about Online Communities edited by Julia Flynn

16: The Rise and Persistence of the Technological Community Ideal by Randy Connolly

17: Online Community Action: Perils and Possibilities by Luciano Paccagnella

Index