This paper outlines a typology for online communities of practice. The typology is based on findings from observations of three online communities of practice, a content analysis of messages, and a review of the existing literature. The three examples of communities of practice are of electronic discussion lists that cover topics of interest to university webmasters, librarians, and educators. This work expands on a typology that consolidated prior research and focused on online communities of practice within organizational settings (Dubé, Bourhis, and Jacob, 2006) by extending it to be inclusive of open online communities of practice that are not constrained by any organizational context. Characterizing communities of practice in this manner enables various aspects of them to be analyzed, which can illuminate ways to support the implementation of effective online communities of practice for specific purposes.
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) on the Internet has been claimed to possess a degree of anonymity that makes the gender of online communicators irrelevant or invisible; this purportedly allows women and men to participate and be recognized for their contributions equally, in contrast with patterns of male dominance traditionally observed in face-to-face communication. This chapter surveys research on gender and CMC, including textual, multimodal, and mobile communications, published between 1989 and 2013. The body of evidence taken as a whole runs counter to the claim that gender is invisible or irrelevant in CMC, or that CMC equalizes gender-based power and status differentials. In concluding, the notion of anonymity is critiqued, and the question of difference vs. disparity is addressed.
Educational technology advocates claim today’s students are technologically savvy content creators and consumers whose mindset differs from previous generations. The digital native-digital immigrant metaphor has been used to make a distinction between those with technology skills and those without. Metaphors such as this one are useful when having initial conversations about an emerging phenomenon, but over time, they become inaccurate and dangerous. Thus, this paper proposes a new metaphor, the digital melting pot, which supports the idea of integrating rather than segregating the natives and the immigrants.
Despite early hopes that the internet would facilitate more socially equitable communication, many age-old forms of discrimination appear to have been preserved. Men are routinely aggressive towards women, experienced users harass newcomers, and young people dominate new social and entertainment media. The current study statistically examines peer scoring and reviewing behavior by over 300,000 users of a prominent new media website over a seven-year period in terms of the gender and age of the users. Findings support previous research on male bias online as well as reveal a complex age hierarchy with gender interactions, which became rather homogeneous over time for all users except older males.
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