In the networks of relationships that influence others behavior and attitude are called opinion leaders. The two-step flow theory suggests that information through a variety of media will receive by opinion leaders, and the opinion leaders will spread the information and have the effect to other people. Today's consumer market companies often offer a trial to the high popularity bloggers for product placement, to establish a positive attitude, good reputation, and to enhance consumers purchase behavior. The views of opinion leaders in the virtual community, either positive or negative affect, all have impact to the members of the community (Bansal & Voyer, 2000). In this study, we view the Xbox LIFE community website as a research field, and use depth interviews of qualitative research as a major research method. Through the depth interview we can know the type difference of community website members and understand how the opinion leaders in the community convey the information. In this study we found that opinion leaders¡¦high degree of participation and professional knowledge in the community played a great influence in the community. The opinion leaders¡¦ speeches and views have also become the main sources to the members of the group.This study will help enterprises to seek more marketing-effective way in use online WMO(word of mouth) in the future. From this study we can find that to operate the community website are not just set up the fan pages just because the community websites are in vogue. We must discover the key to affect the community websites¡¦ members, and create the way to bring the community members together. That is the key to promote brand and service.

This diploma thesis aims to analyse virtual gaming community and it's problems in case of community belonging to EU server of the game called World of Tanks. To solve these problems, Soft System Methodology by P. Checkland, is used. The thesis includes analysis of significance of gaming communities for the gaming industry as a whole. Gaming community is then defined as a soft system. There are 3 problems analysed in the practical part of the thesis using newer version of SSM. One iteration of learning cycle of this methodology is used to solve every single one of the presented problems. Problems are chosen by players using questionnaire. At the end, application of the SSM is evaluated for the domain of gaming communities in general and problems with its application are presented.

Online communities have become commonplace in the modern world, developing on nearly every website and application. These communities can develop on a singular website, e.g. forums like Reddit and 4Chan where like-minded people can discuss and share ideas and websites like Facebook and Twitter which capitalize on social interactions; they develop around gaming platforms, e.g. Xbox live chat or Minecraft servers; and they can develop on applications solely developed to engage with other people, e.g. Internet relay-chatrooms and TikTok. The communities formed from these online services may differ in purpose but ultimately all function within the realm of an online community. I pose the question “How do governing structures in online civil society organizations influence individual behaviors?”, and conducted a case study on the Villoux Server System, an online service based on gaming but rooted in community-building that operates within an institutional framework similar to structures among geographically-bound communities.

abstract: The goal of this research was to understand the different kinds of learning that take place in Mod The Sims (MTS), an online Sims gaming community. The study aimed to explore users' experiences and to understand learning practices that are not commonly observed in formal educational settings. To achieve this goal, the researcher conducted a four-year virtual ethnographic study that followed guidelines set forth in Hine (2000). After Hine, the study focused on understanding the complexity of the relationships between technology and social interactions among people, with a particular emphasis on investigating how participants shaped both the culture and structure of the affinity space. The format for the dissertation consists of an introduction, three core chapters that present different sets of findings, and a concluding chapter. Each of the core chapters, which can stand alone as separate studies, applies different theoretical lenses and analytic methods and uses a separate data set. The data corpus includes hundreds of thread posts, member profiles, online interview data obtained through email and personal messaging (PM), numerous screenshots, field notes, and additional artifacts, such as college coursework shared by a participant. Chapter 2 examines thread posts to understand the social support system in MTS and the language learning practices of one member who was a non-English speaker. Chapter 3 analyzes thread posts from administrative staff and users in MTS to identify patterns of interactions, with the goal of ascertaining how users contribute to the ongoing design and redesign of the site. Chapter 4 investigates user-generated tutorials to understand the nature of these instructional texts and how they are adapted to an online context. The final chapter (Chapter 5) presents conclusions about how the analyses overall represent examples of participatory learning practices that expand our understanding of 21st century learning. Finally, the chapter offers theoretical and practical implications, reflections on lessons learned, and suggestions for future research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2012

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This interview study investigates people's experiences and interactions online to give more nuance to the context of modern relationships, and what the perception of digitized relationships could mean. The study investigates digitized relationships in terms of friendship, love, intimacy, and social media. With these in focus, I discuss broadly the interviewees’ experiences of friendship, intimacy, and love within the use of social media and online dating. Firstly, how the use of it can cause difficulties and impact their perception of themselves and at relationships. Secondly, how this in turn creates meaningful and lasting relationships.  In this study, I had two focus groups that I referred to as gamers and socials, the first group included five who identified as men and the second group included four that identified as women. From the age of 23 to 35 and originates from different parts of Europe. After the interview, four themes were developed: The use of digitization and social media, friendship, love relationships and online and offline. / Denna intervjustudie undersöker människors erfarenheter och interaktioner online för att ge nyans till sammanhanget för moderna relationer och vad uppfattningen om digitaliserade relationer kan betyda. Studien undersöker digitaliserade relationer i termer av vänskap, kärlek, intimitet och sociala medier. Med dessa i fokus diskuterar jag brett intervjupersonernas erfarenheter av vänskap, intimitet och kärlek inom användningen av sociala medier och online-dating. För det första hur användningen av det kan orsaka svårigheter och påverka deras uppfattning om sig själva och på relationer. För det andra hur detta i sin tur skapar meningsfulla och varaktiga relationer. I den här studien hade jag två fokusgrupper som jag döpt till spelare och sociala, den första gruppen inkluderade fem som identifierade sig som män och den andra gruppen inkluderade fyra som identifierade sig som kvinnor. Från 23 till 35 års ålder och kommer från olika delar av Europa. Efter intervjun utvecklades fyra teman: Användning av digitalisering och sociala medier, vänskap, kärleksrelationer och online och offline.

In recent years, microtransactions have become a norm for monetization and a standardbusiness model in free-to-play games. This is something that affects multiple individuals andhas caused quite a stir among players. Through this research, we want to gain anunderstanding of why some microtransaction types might be considered more acceptable thanothers. In addition, to gaining potential data that could possibly give us a look into the futureof the design of microtransactions. We have gathered our data by conducting online chatbased semi-structured interviews with current and former university students studying gamedesign at Uppsala University.The research found that game design students have a predominantly negative opinion aboutmost microtransactions, especially when they were affecting the gameplay, contrary to whenthey were not.