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Engaging online participation: the research

A new, emerging space like social media might seem like unmapped territory. But actually, there's already a lot of knowledge available about how and why people participate online. Our methodology for fostering online participation has its roots in Alex's Ph.D. research at Harvard University and her work for social capital scholar Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone.

That methodology is grounded in three key insights:

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Five ways to shape the soul of the Internet

5 November, 2007
8
by Alexandra Samuel

Does YouTube make people into exhibitionists? Does Facebook stunt teenagers' social skills? Does 43Things help people realize their dreams?

Journalists, academics and web surfers have been arguing over whether the Internet is Ultimate Good or Ultimate Evil long before the social web (a.k.a. "web 2.0") came along. But blogs, social networks and other kinds of online communities have raised the stakes and intensified the debate. Social web sites are more intensively interactive, and more socially connected, so they offer users an experience that is potentially more compelling (or in the view of Internet skeptics, distracting/disengaging) and (in the view of Internet boosters) more elevating, because they realize the Internet's potential for forging and deepening interpersonal and community connectedness.

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