BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media GaLA Game and Learning Alliance The European Network of Excellence on Serious Games Community Nurturing (Task 8.3) Social Network Analysis Approach (D8.8) WP 8 1

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media 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 2

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Communities of Practice 3 “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

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Establishing Communities of Practice 4 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

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Establishing Communities of Practice 5 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

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Establishing Communities of Practice 6 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)

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Social Network Analysis 7 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

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Approach for SNA in GaLA 8 Community lifecycle

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Approach for SNA in GaLA 9 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

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Approach for SNA in GaLA 10 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)

BREMEN September 19-21, 2011 European Commission Information Society and Media Approach for SNA in GaLA 11 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