Communities and Technologies

The book contains 24 research articles related to the emerging research field of Communities and Technologies (C&T). The papers treat subjects such as online communities, communities of practice, Community support systems, Digital Cities, regional communities and the internet, knowledge sharing and communities, civil communities, communities and education and social capital. As a result of a very quality-oriented review process, the work reflects the best of current research and practice in the field of C&T.

How Practice Matters: A Relational View of Knowledge Sharing. - Structural Analysis of Communities of Practice: An Investigation of Job Title, Location and Management Intention. - Episteme or Practice? Differentiated Communitarian Structures in a Biology Laboratory. - We Can See You: A Study of Communities Invisible People through ReachOut. - Email as Spectroscopy: Automated Discovery of Community Structure within Organizations. - Multimedia Fliers: Information Sharing with Digital Community Bulletin Boards. - Knowledge Sharing in Knowledge Communities. - Uses of Information Sources in an Internet-Era Firm: Online and Offline. - Communities and Other Social Structures for Knowledge Sharing A Case Study in an Internet Consultancy Company. - Intranets and Local Community: `Yes, an intranet is all very well, but do we still get free beer and barbeque? . - Learning and Collaboration across Generations in a Community. - The African Dream A Pan-African E-Community Project. - The Role of Social Capital in Regional Technological Innovation: Seeing both the Wood and the Trees. - Weak Ties in Networked Communities. - A Bayesian Computational Model of Social Capital in Virtual Communities. - I-DIAG: From Community Discussion to Knowledge Distillation. - The Role of Knowledge Artifacts in Innovation Management: The Case of a Chemical Compound Designer CoP. - Supporting an Experiment of a Community Support System: Community Analysis and Maintenance Functions in the Public Opinion Channel. - Patients Online Communities Experiences of Emergent Swedish Self-Help on the Internet. - When Users Push Back: Oppositional New Media and Community. - Babel in the International Café: A Respectful Critique. - Synchronizing Asynchronous Collaborative Learners. - Community Support in Universities The Drehscheibe Project. - Adding Connectivity and Loosing Context with ICT: Contrasting Learning Situations from a Community of Practice Perspective.