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Sutcliffe
CHAPTER PROPOSAL: Collaborative Information Behavior: User Engagement and Communication Sharing Defining characteristics of online collaborative visual communities: "Online" defines these groups as web-based. The visual art produced by each member is provided to the community as a digital file. The community does not meet physically. The visual art produced is designed to be displayed and distributed online rather than only in physical gallery spaces. "Collaborative" means the activity of the users provides the content of the site. These groups and their art exist only because users participate, supporting the community by sharing original visual content. There is usually no authority making decisions about the site content, aside from technical limitations imposed on all members (such as file size restrictions.) Contests and competitions are common but other members are the judges. Work is usually for sale but the sites are not focused on advertising. "Visual" limits the site's existence to displays of visual material. Users visit the site to post their visual art and generally do not include other collaborative projects such as audio files or text-based documents. Some sites allow multi-media projects and some users create additional areas within the sites to include blogs, but the emphasis is on the creation and sharing of visual art, rather than music, poetry or journaling. "Community" by definition suggests an interacting population of various kinds of individuals in a common location. Additionally, online collaborative visual communities provide the same range of activities that traditional information grounds provide including socializing, obtaining personal services, shopping, research, communication, and finding employment. It is important to note that "real" activity occurs in these sites. Real money is being spent, real objects are being bought and sold and real people are interacting, in contrast to virtual world environments such as Second Life in which alternative identities are encouraged. Participants in online collaborative visual communities may choose to employ avatars or user identities but the generally-accepted purpose of membership in these communities is to actually produce and share visual art, rather than to create or navigate an alternative universe. What is user-generated content? User-generated content (UGC) describes information produced by the members of a community, provided as a central product of that community, available publicly and prominently, replacing highly edited, professionally packaged, "one-way" information traditionally delivered from authoritative sources. (Wunsch-Vincent, 2007.) The interactivity at the center of UGC, whether online or face to face, provides much of the value and magic of a fully functioning information ground. |