Online community development in the early stages: the life cycle model application to Medical Sciences Stack Exchange
Aslib Journal of Information Management
ISSN: 2050-3806
Article publication date: 13 May 2022
Issue publication date: 29 September 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the nature and evolution of online communities in the early stages of their life cycles. The authors analyze the topics of discussions in an online community to identify issues related to community development. The authors also compare the topics of exemplary questions that founding members believed to be asked with the real questions based on members' information needs.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use Medical Sciences Stack Exchange, a health Q&A community of Stack Exchange, which requires four stages of development: definition, commitment, private beta and public beta. The authors collect postings of discussions and health questions in the first three stages, perform a content analysis of the postings and analyze the topics of discussions and health questions.
Findings
The authors find that the topics of discussions evolved dynamically with the issues of community governance, role as a medical/health community, members and roles, content management, quality control and community design. The authors also find that the real questions included more specific and diverse issues than the exemplary questions that founding members expected.
Originality/value
Theoretically, this study tests the community life cycle model in an online community that has explicit phase markers. The findings could shed light on community development and help prioritize issues to solve and decisions to make in its early stages. Additionally, this study focuses on the challenges and concerns in online health community building and solutions generated by collective efforts that could influence health communications in online communities.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A5A8043500).
Citation
Fu, H. and Oh, S. (2022), "Online community development in the early stages: the life cycle model application to Medical Sciences Stack Exchange", Aslib Journal of Information Management, Vol. 74 No. 6, pp. 1214-1232. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-11-2021-0345
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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