Descriptive questions:

What is the practical relevance of academic Mailing Lists and Newsgroups for university researchers? Are Internet Discussion Groups (IDGs) information tools or social instruments for the creation of new research contacts? (abstract of a paper)

Theoretical goals:

1. Development and testing of models that explain disciplinary differences in the frequency of IDG use: How does the use of this kind of CMC depend on the researchers' academic environment (among others their social networks) and on other communication media? (abstract of a paper)

2. Development and testing of models that explain active participation in academic IDGs: Different models will be developed that relate a researcher's off-line relationships to his on-line communication. These models specify active participation as based on social incentives. Their explanatory power will be compared among each other and with the reciprocity model of Thorn & Connolly (1987) that specifies active participation as based on information exchange incentives. (abstract of a paper)

The aim of this project is to find out to what extent and under which conditions academic Internet Discussion Groups (IDGs) are useful for university researchers. With the term academic IDG we mean a Newsgroup or a Mailing List that is used by university researchers. Many case studies show that users of IDGs evaluate them as useful for the creation of new research ideas, for the transfer of information and for getting into contact with other researchers (e.g. Tombaugh, 1984; Hiltz & Turoff, 1993; Rojo & Ragsdale, 1997). Other authors criticize the low quality of the discussions within IDGs (Conner, 1992; McCarty, 1992). IDGs are not very well suited for the discussion of controversies (e.g. Harasim & Winkelmans, 1990) and established researchers hesitate to use them (Merz, 1997). However, it is difficult to evaluate the benefits of IDGs adequately when the only information we have about them consists of some case studies. The following questions thus arise.
 

• Are IDGs sources for obtaining information or sources for creating contacts?

• Does the peripherality effect (Hesse et al., 1993; Walsh & Bayma, 1996a) exist? Are IDGs of more importance for peripheral and junior researchers than for the established ones?

Moreover, the Internet and means for electronic communication are supposed to be used differently by researchers of different disciplines. Researchers within the natural sciences and especially physicists are the most sophisticated users, whereas researchers within the humanities are expected to use the Internet less intensively (Goodman et al., 1994; Taubes, 1994; Scholl et al., 1996). But it is completely unclear how large these differences really are and what influences them. As potential influence factors are mentioned, among other things, the market link (commercial competition) of a research field, the interdependence between researchers within a research field, and the correspondence between disciplinary working traditions and the use of computer mediated communication. Traditional communication media may have an impact on the use of electronic communication means as well. The publication time lag of journals and the concentration of communication channels (journals) within a research field are seen as possible determinants (Walsh & Bayma, 1996b; Kling & McKim, 1998). Many of these aspects differ between disciplines. Interesting questions are consequently:

• Do IDGs fulfill different functions within the humanities on the one hand and within the natural sciences on the other hand?

• How can disciplinary differences in the use of IDGs be explained?

These questions will be answered with the help of a data set ("main data set") about the communication behavior and communication networks of university researchers out of 8 different disciplines within the Netherlands and England. I collected data of more than 1000 researchers within 189 departments at 36 universities out of the following disciplines.
 

A precondition for an IDG to be successful is that at least some of its members become active contributors to a discussion within an IDG. IDGs differ remarkable with regard to their amount of 'traffic' (posted messages). Usually only a minority of members of an IDG are active information providers whereas the majority stays passive and reads only. Moreover, the question 'which incentives stimulate active participation of members?' is a crucial questions for all kinds of electronic groups of the Internet. Online-communities, for example, face this problem as well.

Consequently, of special importance are the questions how the structure of the information flow within IDGs looks like and how this structure can be explained.

• Which researchers state questions and receive the information and help they ask for?

• Which researchers are the information providers?

• What determines whether a researcher becomes an active contributor to a discussion within an IDG or whether he stays passive?

Existing theories stress only the information benefits of IDGs and argue that a discussion within an IDG is a collective good (Kollock & Smith, 1996; Rojo, 1995; Thorn & Connolly, 1987). However, other researchers argue that on-line relations are linked to off-line relations and that this link has to be included in the analysis of CMC as well (Wellman, 1997; Wellman & Gulia, 1997). New hypotheses will be elaborated that stress the role of the social embeddedness of IDGs within the academic community and that specify the mechanisms of this influence.

The different theories will be tested with the help of data about the use of IDGs by researchers out of a variety of different disciplines. The  main data set  set contains information about a random sample of Mailing Lists and Newsgroups used by Dutch and English researchers. 50 of these mentioned Mailing Lists will be randomly selected. The email addresses of all active and passive members of these Mailing Lists are publicly obtainable. A questionnaire will be sent by email to a random sample of members of these Mailing Lists. Additionally, data about the online communication behavior of these members (their posting of email-messages within the Mailing Lists) can be collected through downloading it from file-servers. Both kinds of data can be combined to a new data set that can be used to answer the research questions. Special care has to be taken that all collected data will be treated confidentially for this data analysis.

The findings of this analysis will give information about to what extent electronic groups of the Internet can solve the participation problem through a kind of "self-management", that is not through active management of the discussion by a listowner, but through an adequate structuring of the list topic and its embededdness in an academic community. Readers who are interested in tools for the active management of electronic groups, e.g. online-communities, might be interested in another research project on the management of online-communities.

The project is conducted by  U. Matzat. I am a Ph.D. student at the ICS. If you have any questions, suggestions or comments on the project, do not hesitate to send me an email .

Project Papers:
For a list of my project papers that describe these topics  in more detail please visit my  "paper-page".

Address:
U. Matzat
Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS)
Department of Sociology
University of Groningen (RUG)
Grote Rozenstr. 31
9712 TG Groningen
The Netherlands
email: U.Matzat@ppsw.rug.nl
Tel: +31/50/3636237
fax: +31/50/3636226

Supervisors:  Prof. Dr. T.A.B. Snijders  (Department of Statistics & Measurement Theory, RUG), Dr. H. de Vos (Department of Sociology, RUG)

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