Analysing Sense of Community through behaviour in an online game lounge Sense of Community Theory Discuss Analysing Sense of Community through behaviour in an online game lounge in the forums; 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, ...

[cursacaik]

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.