Active involvement in discussion-based communities is nowadays a firm part of people's online activities. The measurement of communication ties and networks between contributors to such domains is thus becoming a relevant research question in social sciences. However, especially in web forums, very often almost no direct relational information exists that would indicate the presence of communication ties among contributors. In contrast with the reply-to structure of Usenet newsgroup or mailing list conversations that contain explicit relational information created by the contributors, some web forums only enable participants to add new posts to threads or to quote preceding posts in threads. When discussions emerge, it is difficult to identify who is replying to whom. Drawing on the social network studies dealing with the conversational patterns in Usenet and web forums, this paper presents an alternative approach to identifying the ties between authors of posts. Several assumptions are discussed, and different measures are developed and empirically evaluated. The findings provide a starting point for the development of a standardized methodology for studying social networks in online communities where only limited direct information about communication ties is available.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30132573
This article investigates the patterns of social use of interpersonal communication technologies that can be discerned in todayćs complex media environment, in which people have many channels available for interpersonal communication. The article starts with a comprehensive review of the comparative uses and gratification research of interpersonal communication media. It argues that these studies are efficient in answering questions such as why one device is preferred over another, but the approach they take is less suitable for an analysis of the patterns of actual use of interpersonal communication devices. While they build on various typologies of motives for media use, based upon psychological theories of motivations and needs, this article proposes that a valid typology of actual social uses of interpersonal media should be based on a social action theory in order to find general patterns of social use of interpersonal communication devices. Hence, this article follows recent developments of the uses and gratification approach which suggest treating social use as a social action and finds a fruitful starting point in Habermasćs typology of social action. From this, a typology of social uses of communication devices is derived, allowing a general and comprehensive, yet condensed empirical insight into the social uses of contemporary interpersonal communication technologies within a nationwide sample. Using various statistical techniques, an assessment is made of how five communication channels (i.e. mobile phone, short text messages, telephone, face-to-face and the Internet) are employed for four social uses, i.e. informational-cooperative, strategic, relational and expressive.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30475613
A new approach to constructing generalised probabilities is proposed. It is based on the models using lower and upper previsions, or equivalently, convex sets of probability measures. Our approach uses sets of Markov operators in the role of rules preserving desirability of gambles. The main motivation being the operators of conditional expectations which are usually assumed to reduce riskiness of gambles. Imprecise probability models are then obtained in the ways to be consistent with those desirability preserving rules. The consistency criteria are based on the existing interpretations of models using imprecise probabilities. The classical models based on lower and upper previsions are shown to be a special class of the generalised models. Further, we generalise some standard extension procedures, including the marginal extension and independent products, which can be defined independently of the existing procedures known for standard models.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30785117