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"Welcome!": social and psychological predictors of volunteer socializers in online communities

Published: 23 February 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Volunteer socializers are members of a community who voluntarily help newcomers become familiar with the popular practices and attitudes of the community. In this paper, we explore the social and psychological predictors of volunteer socializers on reddit, an online social news-sharing community. Through a survey of over 1000 reddit users, we found that social identity, prosocial-orientation and generalized reciprocity are all predictors of socializers in the community. Interestingly, a user's tenure with the online community has a quadratic effect on volunteer socialization behaviors -- new and long-time members are both more likely to help newcomers than those in between. We conclude with design implications for motivating users to help newcomers.

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  1. "Welcome!": social and psychological predictors of volunteer socializers in online communities

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
    February 2013
    1594 pages
    ISBN:9781450313315
    DOI:10.1145/2441776
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