Enhancing Online Community Activity: Development and validation of the CA framework

Abstract

Factors contributing to development of active communities are identified and combined into the Community Activity framework, which is useful in setting up new, or revitalizing inactive, communities. Found factors include: notifying members of new messages by e-mail, having a news section, and ability to add pictures to member profiles. During application of the framework to an inactive community, changes have been made to privacy options, polls, activity notifications, and other areas. Significant positive effects have been found in the number of visits, volume of posted messages, and number of topics. Interest of community members in both user profiles and the message board increased significantly. We conclude that the Community Activity framework is able to contribute in developing active online communities. © 2013 International Communication Association.