http://www.senseofcommunity.org/forum This forum is for discussion of how to advance the theory of sense of community and its relations with human well being, healthy neighborhoods and other environments, culture, and other conditions as well as how SOC may differ according to different type of communities. en Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:07:51 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.senseofcommunity.org/forum/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.senseofcommunity.org/forum http://www.senseofcommunity.org/forum/f8/analysing-sense-community-through-behaviour-online-game-lounge-23.html Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:45:39 GMT Hi everyone,

I'm a PhD student in Computer Science. I specialise in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) which can involve a mix of one or more of social psychology, sociology, and design with computer science. My background is in the computer science side, though I have a passing familiarity with some areas of the other fields, at least in application to CSCW. Sense of Community is a new topic for me though.

Currently I am involved in a project investigating the sense of community in an online game lounge. A game lounge is a virtual place where people can log in and communicate with each other to negotiate a game to play together. In this case the games are casual web based games like chess, canasta, monopoly, etc.

I have access to the server log files which only tell me about login/logout, when games are started/finished (and the result), and when and to whom chat messages are sent (though no message content).

So what I am asking for is some advice about where I should be looking for background literature on definitions of Community. Especially definitions that can be interpreted to result in measurable behaviours (though I strongly suspect it won't be that neat).

Thank you in advance for the help. ]]> Sense of Community Theory cursacaik http://www.senseofcommunity.org/forum/f8/analysing-sense-community-through-behaviour-online-game-lounge-23.html