Online Leadership
Steven L. Johnson, Hani Safadi, and Samer Faraj (March 2015). “The Emergence of Online Community Leadership” Information Systems Research.
Abstract: Compared to traditional organizations, online community leadership processes and how leaders emerge are not well studied. Previous studies of online leadership have often identified leaders as those who administer forums or have high network centrality scores. Although communication in online communities occurs almost exclusively through written words, little research has addressed how the comparative use of language shapes community dynamics. Using participant surveys to identify leading online community members, this study analyzes a year of communication network history and message content to assess whether language use differentiates leaders from other core community participants.
We contribute a novel use of textual analysis to develop a model of language use to evaluate the utterances of all participants in the community. We find that beyond communication network position–in terms of formal role, centrality, membership in the core, and boundary spanning– those viewed as leaders by other participants, post a large number of positive, concise posts with simple language familiar to other participants. This research contributes a language model to study online language use and by pointing to the emergent and shared nature of online community leadership.
Steven L. Johnson (2010). Should I Stay or Should I Go? Continued Participation Intentions in Online Communities in Leslie A. Toombs (Ed.), Proceedings of the Seventieth Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (CD), ISSN 1543-8643. Full paper (PDF).
Abstract: Online communities formed by volunteer members are increasingly recognized as sources of innovative ideas, as producers of information goods, and as a critical component for successful product marketing. Understanding motivation for continued participation in online communities is an understudied area of research with practical relevance. We propose that continued participation in online communities is a multi-dimensional construct. To investigate individual-level and online community-level antecedents of two dimensions of continued participation, participation continuance intentions and participation intensity intentions, we analyze 534 survey responses and communication history of 135,477 messages from members of 33 different online communities. Our cross-level analysis furthers the understanding of the relationship between interaction with online community leadership, psychological safety, participation continuance intentions and participation intensity intentions.
This study provides support for the proposition that participation intentions in online communities is a multi-dimensional construct. Further, we find evidence that online community psychological safety is both a contextual factor influenced by online community leadership as well as an influence on individual participation intentions. The findings demonstrate the importance of a multi-level approach to studying online community participation. We illustrate the use of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) as one technique for expanding multi-level research into the field of online community study. The improved understanding of continued participation in online communities provided by this study extends theories of online communities and expands practitioner knowledge of this important phenomenon.
Steven L. Johnson (2008). Impact of leadership on continued participation in online groups. Unpublished dissertation. U. of Maryland, College Park.
Abstract: Online groups formed by volunteer members are increasingly recognized as sources of innovative ideas, as producers of information goods, and as a critical component for successful product marketing. Compared to formal organizations, online groups appear as anarchic collections of individuals largely devoid of formal authority. Yet online groups develop strong group norms, successfully generate information goods, and satisfy member needs–outcomes that seem impossible without some form of leadership by influential members. Research on open-membership voluntary online groups has consistently found that contribution to online groups is dominated by a small percentage of participants.
The goal of this research is to better understand the role of leadership in online groups and to evaluate the impact of leadership in maintaining online groups by supporting continued participation intentions of existing members. I explored three related questions regarding leadership in online groups. First, does member interaction with group leaders contribute to continued participation intentions over and above a model based on past participation? Second, do shared context and direct communication with leaders impact continued participation intentions? And third, do group characteristics–group psychological safety, group size, and perceived number of leaders–moderate the relationship between group members and group leaders? I collected 535 survey responses from members of thirty-three different online groups (average of sixteen members per group) and also analyzed group communication history (a total of 135,477 messages). This cross-level analysis furthers our understanding of the relationship between interaction with group leadership, psychological safety, participation role intentions, and turnover intentions. I found that leadership in online groups is a determinant of online group outcomes. Online group leaders shape the group context, including psychological safety, which encourages or discourages participation.
This study shows that leadership processes, group context, and differentiation among dimensions of participation intentions are all important considerations for further understanding of online groups.
