Storytelling - or why we should become suspicious when someone wants to tell us stories

Storytelling is a very powerful way to spread your message - hence the hype about storytelling in business and politics. That's how it reads, for example:

"The most successful companies in the world have profound stories behind them (often deeply tied to their founders) that instill a sense of bigger purpose and meaning into what they do. For example, Apple, Tesla and Google are so much more than companies - they are legacy brands created by visionaries who aspire(d) to change the world." 

Most of these "profound stories", however, belong to the field of hagiographic edification literature for executives. They are post-hoc rationalizations in which the interplay of talent and (happy) coincidences is subsequently interpreted as the work of an entrepreneur led by visionary foresight. But where do stories get this power from?

Fake News are a frontal attack on the fourth estate in a democracy

The phenomenon is not specific to the Internet era: In 1898, the USA and Spain were on the brink of the Spanish-American war. In January of the same year, the battleship USS Main had arrived in the port of Havana. A few days later it sank after a devastating explosion in which 268 people lost their lives. The public mood in the USA had been heated up further, among others, by two competing publicists: William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst's instruction to his correspondent in Havana has been passed down: "You furnish the pictures. I'll furnish the war." [1] At the time, the press market was an extremely lucrative business and any means was fine in the fight for an increase in circulation. Possibly, the Spanish-American war would not have broken out if this bitter battle for market share had not taken place. These and similar excesses were the reason for various press codes. And it took decades for the press to build the confidence that a fourth power in a democracy needs. [2]

Do virtual social networks destroy the social fabric?

There is some debate as to whether virtual social networks have a net beneficial or net detrimental effect on society. [1]  And it must be admitted that the question is difficult to answer. For instance, what is the social fabric that is threatened by social networks? Research on social capital could provide an answer.

The social Internet has come to stay

Critical voices have accompanied the development of the internet from the very beginning. Recently, there have been increased warnings against the dangers of the social media. The main reason for this: Facebook's blatant misconduct and the way in which the company deals with its mistakes. However, we will all have to get used to the social internet, because it has come to stay. The social media are the expression of our human nature.

“Can we go back to using Facebook for what it was originally for - looking up exes to see how fat they got?” (Bill Maher)

Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a name for himself when he spoke out in favour of restricting the use of technology in schools, suggesting that he had banned his nephew from participating in social networks. And Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and long-time Facebook consultant, is quoted as saying,"God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains". Social media has a problem, and not just since Facebook's inglorious role in the American election campaign. Platforms whose self-declared goal it is to bring us all closer together and make us happy seem - indeed - to have the opposite effect.

What makes a good instructional video?

Video supports education in many areas and online courses regularly include instructional videos. Video transports the content both audibly and visually, creating a multisensory learning environment that is said to be particularly conducive to learning. The fact that multisensory learning environments can be beneficial to learning (and when it does so) has been investigated a lot of times in laboratory experiments. In practice, however, there is still uncertainty about what really makes a good video.

What's with the hype about videos in Social Media?

Videos are currently being hyped in connection with social media. Look at your social media accounts and you will see that videos have become a dominant form of content. And apparently, the supply is matched by a corresponding demand. A company like Facebook would not place so much emphasis on videos if it hadn't come to the conclusion that this kind of content is particularly popular with users.

Involvement as the driving force behind sharing

Why is some content shared on the web and other content is not? How can you get more people to share blog posts, tweets or Facebook posts? This article deals with the prerequisites for sharing content that are all strongly related to the concept of ego-participation (involvement). It ends with hints on how to promote sharing.

Training on the go - mobile learning with audio media.

Today, every occupation, whether dependent or self-employed, requires that you keep your knowledge up to date at all times. Often, however, the activity itself leaves little time for further training. In addition, many forms of learning require temporal and spatial planning (e. g. the face-to-face seminar). Mobile learning (M-learning), on the other hand, promises that learning can take place spontaneously at any location - i. e. at the bus stop, in the subway or during car journeys. This is tempting because especially those who travel a lot in the car might want to use their free time for learning.

How reading on screen influences our thinking

We are influencing the environment with our technology. But it's not a one-way street. The technology in our environment affects us too. It literally changes our thinking. And not just thoughts and attitudes, but our basic thinking processes. According to a recent study, it makes a difference whether we read information on paper or on screen. Depending on the medium, different processes of information are activated.

Measuring the Sense of Community in Online Communities

A strong sense of community (SOC) is considered to be desirable because it fosters pro-social behavior of community members and helps deal with external challenges/threats (cf. Sense of community in virtual communities). So every community manager should be highly interested in assessing the SOC of her/his community. But measuring the SOC and interpreting the result is by no means easy.

Sense of Community: An Alternative Approach

The empirical study of Koh & Kim (2003) [1] on the sense of community is interesting in three respects: Firstly, the authors offer an alternative conceptualization, secondly, they try to identify antecedents, and thirdly, this study reveals the importance of offline activities for the SOC in virtual communtities.

Measuring the Sense of Community in Online Communities

A strong sense of community (SOC) is considered to be desirable because it fosters pro-social behavior of community members and helps deal with external challenges/threats (cf. Sense of community in virtual communities). So every community manager should be highly interested in assessing the SOC of her/his community. But measuring the SOC and interpreting the result is by no means easy.

Sense of Community: Face-to-face communities vs. online communities

Originally, the SOC-concept was developed for face-to-face communities (geographical neighborhoods). McMillan and Chavis (1986) [1] suggest four dimensions which work together dynamically in order to create and maintain an overall sense of community:

1. Membership [MEM]: The concept includes emotional safety derived from membership, the sense of belonging and identification with the community, personal investment in the community leading to stronger bonds, and some kind of common symbol system, which unites a community. These attributes go together in a mutually self-reinforcing way.

2. Influence [INFL] means a reciprocal relationship between individuals and the community in terms of their impact on one another. Influence is a bi-directional concept, as for a group to be attractive, an individual must feel they have some control and influence over it, while, on the other hand, for a group to be cohesive it must also influence its individual members. McMillan and Chavis (1986) state that pressure of conformity from community members actually comes from the needs of individual members for consensual validation. In turn conformity serves as a force for cohesiveness.

3. Integration and Fulfillment of Needs [IFN]: Members must perceive the association to the community as rewarding for the individual (like status of membership, or the possibility to share in the success of the community, and the perceived competence of other individuals in the community who might help the member with her/his own issues).

4. Shared Emotional Connection [SEC]: The more people interact, the more likely they are to form close relationships. The more positive this interaction, the stronger the bond developed.

SOC soon became an important enabler for the success of face-to-face communities. It was said to

• increase participation and feelings of belonging, 
• hold community development efforts together,  
• lead to satisfaction with and commitment to the community, 
• enhance involvement and problem focused coping behavior, 
• have a positive impact on the sustainability of a community  
• lead to higher satisfaction, participation, and commitment within social structures (cf. [10] for the relevant literature). 

In 2002, Obst et al. [1a] published the results of their investigation about the sense of community (cf. Sense of community - Is there a fifth dimension?) They had asked 359 members of SF fandom attending Aussiecon 3, the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention how they feel about the fandom community (a - relational - community of interest with membership from all over the world) and about their neighborhood (a geographical community). McMillan and Chavis' four dimensions of SOC could be established in both communities (SF fandom and neighborhood). BUT: In-group identification was a separate 5th dimension in both community types.
All five dimensions were significant predictors of overall sense of community in both community types but acted differently with respect to the community type:

• Conscious identification with fandom emerged as the strongest predictor, while in the neighborhood setting it was the weakest predictor.
• Belonging was a strong predictor in both communities. This suggests that belonging is an important dimension of sense of community in whatever context we are examining.
• Identification, however, seems to be more important in the communities to which we choose to belong than in those communities which we may have made a less conscious decision to join.
• Influence was an important predictor in geographical communities, however not at all important in the interest community. This may again be due to the element of perceived choice. If you choose to belong to an association due to common interest the need for influence over that association may be less than the need to feel some control or influence over the area in which you live. 

Another researcher, Anita Blanchard [8], too, had found a considerable overlap between the senses of community for face-to-face and virtual communities, but there were also significant differences (cf. Sense of virtual community: Antecedents and consequences for community management):

• Influence may be less important to members in online communities than to members of face-to-face communities. (Note: Koh & Kim [8], on the other hand, stress the importance of influence in online communities, cf. Sense of community - an alternative approach).
• Additionally, members in online communities feel that they know the personalities of others and experience and observe more personal relationships than do members of face-to-face communities.

Thus, there seem to be important differences between the sense of community in virtual communities (SOVC) and the sense of community in face-to-face communities (SOC). Using the same tool for measuring the sense of community in both communities may not be rewarding.

Measuring the SOC - The Sense of Community Index (SCI)

One tool for measuring the SOC in face-to-face communities is the Sense of Community Index (SCI) which is said to be the most widely used measure of the construct. It was developed as part of the seminal New York City Block Booster action-research project. [2] The scale items are published in the appendix of Perkins et al. (1990). [3].
Unfortunately, there was never a confirmation of its intended dimensions or sub scales measuring the four aspects of SOC (MEM, INFL, IFN, SEC). Several studies tried to find out which item measured which aspect of SOC. The results are in the table. Item #10 (It is very important to me to live on this particular block.) for example "somehow" measures all four aspects, depending on the community under study.

Table 1: Comparison of factor structure found across studies [6]

Obst, P. L., & White, K.M. (2004). Revisiting the sense of community Index: A confirmatory factor analysis. Journal of Community Psychology, 32(6), 691-705. Google Scholar.

*) Original: resident survey data from 47 street blocks in five neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, New York (1985 - 1986)
**) Obst et. al: geographical community data
***) Chipuer & Pretty: adult neighborhood data
****) Obst & White: university students' community, two items removed because not applicable

Blanchard's SOVC - an adaption of the original SCI

Based on her prior findings, Anita Blanchard [7] developed a sense of virtual community (SOVC) measure, on the basis of the SCI. Given the differences between face-to-face communities, there may be items in the SCI that do not have relevance in virtual communities, and the SCI may be missing parts of the SOVC. The questionnaire had 22 items; four items from the SCI had to be eliminated because they were inappropriate. The resulting 18 items in the SOVC measure are evenly divided between the SCI and newly developed measures. The newly developed items were introduced in order to assess support and identification. The SOVC had a Likert type response set (1 = never to 4 = quite a lot), whereas the SCI had a true-false response set.
Items adapted from the original SCI

• Q1. I think this group is a good place for me to be a member.
• Q3. Other members and I want the same thing from this group.
• Q4. I can recognize the names most members in this group.
• Q5. I feel at home in this group.
• Q7. I care about what other group members think of my actions.
• Q9. If there is a problem in this group, there are members here who can solve it.
• Q10. It is very important to me to be a member of this group.
• Q12. I expect to stay in this group for a long time.

Deleted during the analysis

• Q2. Members of this group do not share the same values.
• Q6. Very few other group members know me.
• Q8. I have no influence over what this group is like.
• Q11. Members of this group generally don’t get along with each other.

Additional items related to "support"

• Q13. I anticipate how some members will react to certain questions or issues in this group.
• Q14. I get a lot out of being in this group.
• Q15. I’ve had questions that have been answered by this group.
• Q16. I’ve gotten support from this group.
• Q17. Some members of this group have friendships with each other.
• Q18. I have friends in this group.
• Q19. Some members of this group can be counted on to help others.

Additional items related to "identification"

• Q20. I feel obligated to help others in this group.
• Q21. I really like this group.
• Q22. This group means a lot to me.

Interestingly, Blanchard circumvent the problem of attributing the items to different scales measuring different aspects of the SOVC, she measured an overall factor instead. The test in listservs and Usenet newsgroups ranging from pet lovers to human resource professionals showed that the 18-items SOVC questionnaire was a more sensitive measure than the SCI.

The Sense of Community Index 2 (SCI-2) © - a revision of the SCI [9]

In 2008, Chavis et al. [9] presented a revision of the SCI, a 24 item Sense of Community Index version 2 (SCI-2). The revised version comes with a Likert-scale response format (1 = not at all, 4 = completely) and was used in a survey with 1.800 people. Unlike SCI, it was able to cover all the attributes of a sense of community described in the original theory - but in a face-to-face community context. Here are the items:
Reinforcement of Needs

• 1. I get important needs of mine met because I am part of this community.
• 2. Community members and I value the same things.
• 3. This community has been successful in getting the needs of its members met.
• 4. Being a member of this community makes me feel good.
• 5. When I have a problem, I can talk about it with members of this community.
• 6. People in this community have similar needs, priorities, and goals.

Membership

• 7. I can trust people in this community.
• 8. I can recognize most of the members of this community.
• 9. Most community members know me.
• 10. This community has symbols and expressions of membership such as clothes, signs, art, architecture, logos, landmarks, and flags that people can recognize.
• 11. I put a lot of time and effort into being part of this community.
• 12. Being a member of this community is a part of my identity.

Influence

• 13. Fitting into this community is important to me.
• 14. This community can influence other communities.
• 15. I care about what other community members think of me.
• 16. I have influence over what this community is like.
• 17. If there is a problem in this community, members can get it solved.
• 18. This community has good leaders.

Shared emotional connection

• 19. It is very important to me to be a part of this community.
• 20. I am with other community members a lot and enjoy being with them.
• 21. I expect to be a part of this community for a long time.
• 22. Members of this community have shared important events together, such as holidays, celebrations, or disasters.
• 23. I feel hopeful about the future of this community.
• 24. Members of this community care about each other.

Abfalter at al. [10] tested a German version of the SCI-2 in an online community for elderly Germans (http://feierabend.de,  approximately 163k members as of May 2011, 312 respondents). Nine items of the SCI-2 had to be eliminated because they did not measure SOVC. However, the remaining 15 measures suggested a good fit of all four dimensions of the SOC. Here are the eliminated items:
Reinforcement of Needs

• 2. Community members and I value the same things.
• 3. This community has been successful in getting the needs of its members met.
• 4. Being a member of this community makes me feel good.

Membership

• 8. I can recognize most of the members of this community.
• 10. This community has symbols and expressions of membership such as clothes, signs, art, architecture, logos, landmarks, and flags that people can recognize.
• 11. I put a lot of time and effort into being part of this community.
• 12. Being a member of this community is a part of my identity.

Influence

• 15. I care about what other community members think of me.

Shared emotional connection

• 22. Members of this community have shared important events together, such as holidays, celebrations, or disasters.

Responsible for this elimination are several particularities of the Feierabend-Community:

• Community size: In a large community, members have little knowledge about each other. How should they know whether all other members value the same things? Furthermore, in a large community the members' needs and well-being are likely to vary enormously which may explain why item #3 and item #4 had to be dropped.
• Members' motivation: In communities where getting a certain information is the members' primary concern, the individual member may not have to invest a lot of time and effort, which would explain the exclusion of item #11. But, if the questionnaire had been accidentally distributed solely among the community's core members the result might have been different.
• Anonymity: The authors assume that anonymity is the main reason why so many items measuring the membership aspect of SOVC - in this study - did not measure SOVC significantly. For example, why should I care about what other community members think of me (item #15) if I can remain anonymous?
• Community type: Some items (like item #10) are only applicable to face-to-face communities (or at least to virtual communities where members meet face-to-face on a regular basis like sci-fi fandom conventions).

Therefore, Abfalter et al. suggest to rephrase some of the eliminated items from the perspective of a member of a large online community.

And how about the practical implications?

After so many studies and empirical evidence, can we help a community manager in this situation?

I've got a product support community (X active members, Y post per day) with a SOC-score of 2.4. Is that good? Can I improve that score, given the performance of other communities in this domain? The lowest sub-score is for shared emotional connection with 1.2. Should I invest more time in improving it or is this score generally low for communities like mine?

No, unfortunately, we can't (yet).
Obviously, every approach to measure SO(V)C seems to be different - like the communities to which the measures are applied. The biggest difference is the one between face-to-face communities and online communities. Online communities, for example, use different means of communication, provide a media-rich and playful environment, and they are often anonymous. These differences raise doubt whether SOC measures for face-to-face communities can be applied to communities in a virtual setting [10].

One could use for instance the SCI-2 as it is but it must be clear that what it measures is not the "true" SOVC of the community but only something somehow related to the original SOC-concept. (Of course, remeasuring the same community with the same index from time to time may give one valuable insights into the communities evolution). But the results of community A cannot be compared with those of community B because the SCI-2 may have measured two different SOC-related concepts. Therefore, benchmarking one's community in this way is impossible.
But how about the adapted indices? Does taking one of those questionnaires and applying it to a community give one the community's "true" SOVC? The adapted versions omit several items which were irrelevant in the communities under study but which might be relevant in the community at hand. Much seems to depend therefore on the characteristics of the online community.

So, what can be done? There is a proven SOC-concept. There are a lot of hints about how to apply it to online communities and there are items that seem to be appropriate to measure the SOVC (somehow). Suppose then, there is an index with applicable items. In a first step, one could use this same index in as many communities as possible to identify those items which measure the SOC best and form the four sub scales - controlling for such community characteristics as size, type (newsgroup, blog, support forum etc.), anonymity, members (gamers, business professionals, consumers etc.), demographics, participation level etc. At this stage, it is perhaps possible to filter out irrelevant items and variables. With many participating communities one could establish a definite set of items and variables to be controlled. The result would be a database for benchmarking purposes. Insert your community's characteristics and the database would provide you with the data from comparable communities.

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[1] McMillan, D., & Chavis, D. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14, 6-23. Google Scholar. See also Dr. David McMillan's website for a detailed description of SOC and the dynamics of its components and an instructive (and very entertaining) video from the CMX SUMMIT 2014.

[1a] Obst, P., Zinkiewicz, L., & Smith, S. G. (2002). Sense of community in science fiction fandom, Part 1: Understanding sense of community in an international community of interest. Journal of Community Psychology, 30(1), 87-103. Google Scholar.

Obst, P., Zinkiewicz, L., & Smith, S. G. (2002). Sense of community in science fiction fandom, Part 2: Comparing neighborhood and interest group sense of community. Journal of Community Psychology, 30(1), 105-117. Google Scholar.

Obst, P., Smith, S. G., & Zinkiewicz, L. (2002). An exploration of sense of community, Part 3: Dimensions and predictors of psychological sense of community in geographical communities. Journal of Community Psychology, 30(1), 119-133. Google Scholar.

[2] Long, D. A., & Perkins, D. (2003)."Confirmatory factor analysis of the sense of community index and development of a brief SCI." Journal of Community Psychology 31.3 (2003): 279-296. Google Scholar.

[3] Perkins, D. D., Florin, P., Rich, R. C., Wandersman, A., & Chavis, D. M. (1990). Participation and the social and physical environment of residential blocks: Crime and community context. American Journal of Community Psychology, 18(1), 83-115. Google Scholar.

[4] Obst, P., Smith, S. G., & Zinkiewicz, L. (2002). An exploration of sense of community, Part 3: Dimensions and predictors of psychological sense of community in geographical communities. Journal of Community Psychology, 30(1), 119-133. Google Scholar.

[5] Chipuer, H. & Pretty, G. (1999). A review of the sense of community index: current uses, factor structure, reliability, and further development. Journal of Community Psychology, 27, 643-658. Google Scholar.

[6] Obst, P. L., & White, K.M. (2004). Revisiting the sense of community Index: A confirmatory factor analysis. Journal of Community Psychology, 32(6), 691-705. Google Scholar.

[7] Blanchard, A. L. (2007). Developing a sense of virtual community measure. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(6), 827-830. Google Scholar.

[8] Blanchard, Anita L. and Markus, M. Lynne (2004). The Experienced "Sense" of a Virtual Community: Characteristics and Processes. Database for Advances in Information Systems; Winter 2004; ABI/INFORM Global p. 65; Google Scholar.

Koh, J., Kim, Y. G., & Kim, Y. G. (2003). Sense of virtual community: A conceptual framework and empirical validation. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 8(2), 75-94. Google Scholar.

[9] Chavis, D.M., Lee, K.S., & Acosta J.D. (2008). The Sense of Community (SCI) Revised: The Reliability and Validity of the SCI-2. Paper presented at the 2nd International Community Psychology Conference, Lisboa, Portugal. Google.

For further translations of the SCI-2 into French, Spanish and Portuguese as well as for further resources see: http://www.senseofcommunity.com/show-files.php?category=11

[10] Abfalter, D., Zaglia, M. E., & Mueller, J. (2012). Sense of virtual community: A follow up on its measurement. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(2), 400-404. Google Scholar.

Social Relationships in Massive Multiplayer Online Games

Two studies offer very interesting insights into the social networking behavior of players of fantasy massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG or MMOG). In a longitudinal analysis Shen et al. [1] analyzed the driving factors of social relationships in EverQuest II and Ang et al. [2] had a closer look at the players in a guild in World of Warcraft. At second glance, many results can be generalized to communities of practice.

Communities of Action: Are Online Activists Different from Offline Activists?

Theoretically, the question whether political online participation differs from offline participation can be answered in two ways [1]:

Sense of Community: Is there a fifth dimensions?

In three papers, Obst et al. [1, 2, 3] published the results of their investigation about the sense of community (SOC). They had asked 359 members of SF fandom attending Aussiecon 3, the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention about the way they feel about the fandom community (a - relational - community of interest with membership from all over the world) and about their neighbourhood (a geographical community). The main research interest was to find out whether McMillan and Chavis' four dimensions of SOC played a role in both community types (relational and geographic) and whether there is a separate fifth factor - conscious ingroup identification. Both assumptions were confirmed by the results.

Community feedback is likely to perpetuate undesired member behavior

The feedback of other community members is considered to be an important corrective factor in moderating community discussions. Liking a post, voting on a comment, rating are the most common feedback mechanisms. Theoretically, feedback would lead users to behave in ways that benefit the community.

Successfull Managment of Online Health Communities

Browsing the Internet, I stumbled across these three interesting articles about the successful management of online health communities. Here are the (slightly modified) abstracts:

Virtual Communities of Practice - Start-up and Cultivation

Since the early 90s, Jean Lave's and Etienne Wenger's concept of communities of practice [1] has produced a huge amount of scholarly and more popular literature, first as a theory of learning and later in the field of knowledge management. In the advent of the digital era, communities of practice are not just organized as face-to-face communities but as virtual communities as well and so Wenger et al. [2] re-conceptualized communities of practice for digital environments.

(Dis-)satisfaction with the online community - Herzberg’s two factors theory in a community context

Intuitively, one would say that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are like two poles on the same continuum. But that is not necessarily so. In the context of job satisfaction and job performance Herzberg developed his two factors theory and showed that there is a set of factors that causes satisfaction (motivators) and another one that causes dissatisfaction (hygiene factors) when absent. [1]. The practical implication is that to improve job attitudes and productivity, administrators must recognize and attend to both sets. The question is whether this theory can be applied to satisfaction with an online community and participation in community life as well.