Role of Lurkers in Online Communities

From Information Systems at Pitt Business

This paper looks at knowledge management in the context of online virtual groups or communities. These communities have both core members, and peripheral members that consume resources but do not add to the community resources. Lurking has been identified as a deterrent to community survival in previous papers researching online community success and survival. Few studies focus specifically on lurking, instead they focus on active members which may over-exaggerate or increase their bias towards these types of members.

This paper investigates the role that lurkers play in these communities and the impact that they have on the group/community. Explanations for lurking are presented as forms of social loafing (negative effects of lurking) and as a step in the socialization of new members (positive effects of lurking). The positive and negative effects of lurking are further moderated by basic community type (relational: individuals seeking for friendship vs. exchange: information exchange is the basis of the community).

[edit] Abstract

By sponsoring, promoting or simply monitoring virtual communities related to their products, work processes, and other topics of interest, organizations leverage the efforts, insights, and abilities of individuals inside and outside their organization. Lurkers are participants who persistently demure from engaging in the core activities that sustain a virtual community. Because virtual communities are perpetuated through voluntary contributions, the persistent peripheral participation of lurkers is sometimes viewed negatively as social loafing or free-riding. Alternatively, an individual may engage in legitimate peripheral participation when their passive monitoring of group activities educates, socializes, and otherwise prepares them for more effective contribution. We reconcile these conflicting views of lurking with individual- and community-level models of peripheral participation that include a parsimonious typology of virtual communities. Through empirical tests based on over 395,000 observations gathered over five months from 548 online discussion forums, we demonstrate how lurking effects growth in site membership and participation. We conclude that lurking as legitimate or illegitimate peripheral participation is context-dependent and a more complex, nuanced activity than previously theorized and measured.

[edit] Paper Information

Authors: Adrian Yeow, Steven L. Johnson, Samer Faraj

To read more check out the paper at Lurking: Legitimate or Illegitimate Peripheral Participation?

This article was originally presented at ICIS 2006

[edit] Keywords

Trust, Internet, brand image, brand awareness, branding alliance, e-commerce, associative network model of memory, familiarity, information integration theory