Theory Building Beyond Communities: Population-Level Research

• In Event: Communication in the Networked Age: A Discussion of Theory Building through Data-Driven Research

Abstract

While the large majority of published research on online communities are analyses conducted entirely within individual communities, Dr. Shaw will argue for the value of a population-based approach in which researchers study groups of similar communities. Population-level research increases the generalizability of findings and usefully extends theory building to processes and dynamics that are only possible to study using populations: community-level variables, information diffusion processes across communities, ecological dynamics, and multi-level community processes.

Author

• Aaron Shaw, Northwestern U