Community Archetypes: An Empirical Framework for Guiding Research Methodologies to Reflect User Experiences of Sense of Virtual Community
Gale H. Prinster, C. Estelle Smith, Chenhao Tan, Brian C. Keegan

TL;DR
This paper introduces the Community Archetypes framework based on empirical research on Reddit, aiming to guide methodological choices and develop tools that better reflect and support users' sense of virtual community.
Contribution
It presents a novel framework identifying five distinct community archetypes, informing research methods and community support tools aligned with user experiences of SOVC.
Findings
Five distinct Community Archetypes identified
Research methods can broadly reflect users' SOVC
Framework supports designing more user-centered community tools
Abstract
Humans need a sense of community (SOC), and social media platforms afford opportunities to address this need by providing users with a sense of virtual community (SOVC). This paper explores SOVC on Reddit and is motivated by two goals: (1) providing researchers with an excellent resource for methodological decisions in studies of Reddit communities; and (2) creating the foundation for a new class of research methods and community support tools that reflect users' experiences of SOVC. To ensure that methods are respectfully and ethically designed in service and accountability to impacted communities, our work takes a qualitative, community-centered approach by engaging with two key stakeholder groups. First, we interviewed 21 researchers to understand how they study "community" on Reddit. Second, we surveyed 12 subreddits to gain insight into user experiences of SOVC. Results show that…
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Taxonomy
TopicsKnowledge Management and Sharing · Open Source Software Innovations · Digital Marketing and Social Media
