Online Community Design: Review of Frameworks and Developing Online Community Construct

The purpose of this study is to develop an online community construct, which proposes an inclusive illustration of the structure of online communities, for online community designers. This study reviewed researches from psychology, sociology, management engineering, and practical reports to understand the characteristics and dynamics of online communities. The proposed online community construct visualizes the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of online community. As the notion of community originates from geographical groups, and with the assumption that geographical community shares identical characteristics with online community, this study reviewed researches about geographical communities as a starting-point. Then the study went through three main perspectives (1) online community attributes, (2) sense of online community and (3) challenges of online community. Then this study proposed an online community construct that encompasses the reviewed frameworks. The online community can be seen as a congregation of members from two sources. One is from the 'Shared Goal' that meets the personal needs. Given the shared goal, members gather into the community without personal relationship and have more chances to feel the sense of belonging to their needs fulfillment or benefit. This befitting tendency leads to strengthening of membership. Public online forums fall under this classification. The other source is from the emotional connections that are already initiated by personal and casual contacts in the real world. The network of emotional connection can evolve into an online congregation of people under faint boundaries. Although there is no (or weak) shared goal, members are strongly bound to other members. Personal homepage or web log (blog) can be classified as an example of relationship-oriented community.