Research on online communities has emphasized the individual benefits of social support for members, but less is known about how such communities are regulated through organizing processes of support and control. Drawing on a survey of 214 members of a particular online message board community, we develop and test a model of social support, strength of ties, normative influence, and concertive control and their influence on members’ sense of virtual community (SOVC). We find that all four factors predict SOVC, but that normative influence and concertive control have the strongest effects. Furthermore, social support and concertive control mediate the effects of number of strong ties and normative influence (respectively) on SOVC. Finally, we find no association between SOVC and time-lagged posting frequency. Our findings have important implications for understanding the factors that lead to attachment in online communities, and they suggest that sense of belonging works through tandem communicative processes of support and control.

Inspired by the reported use of Web 2.0-based applications to stir national revolutions in the Arab World, and the potential of this technology to increase transparency and engage citizens in decision-making processes as documented by research in egovernment, this study explores to what extent Arab League nations are using "democratic" features in their government websites and how citizens have responded to these initiatives. It does this by comparing (1) the information access and opportunities for participation offered in their portals with non-Arab countries, (2) and the traffic to governmental websites and number of citizens (viewers, fans, followers) engaged by their social media applications. For this purpose, 160 websites from 82 different countries were examined. Results show that although non-Arab countries allow users to get access to more information and present more social media applications with a higher number of citizens participating on them as viewers, fans, and followers, surprisingly no differences were found in terms of participatory features and local traffic rank in governmental websites. Six countries were selected as case studies to lend evidence to the results.

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Field methods offer a way to get a multifaceted view of the communicative processes associated with organizing, organizations, and the complex relationships that make up and are shaped by organizations. This entry discusses the history and evolution of field methods in organizational communication. It starts by defining field research and its methods, describes its development in the discipline, and identifies the types of phenomena and topics studied. Field studies are then arrayed on a spectrum ranging from low to middle ground to high, using examples of key studies to illustrate each type. Key considerations, practical issues, and future directions are then discussed.