Exploring the Russian Online Gift-Exchange Communities: The Results of Nethnographic Approach

Abstract

This paper reports on a two-week nethnographic (online) observation of four online gift-exchange communities – virtual platforms, where participants conduct barter exchange of different daily objects such as books, children's products, furniture, home ware and others. These communities as case of informal economy initially do not have formal attributed rules. It is essential to find out (1) which rules and mechanisms exist in this type of economy; (2) what motivates people who are not acquainted with another to exchange gifts; and (3) understand the way this community exists. The conclusion is drawn that social capital is the basic engine of investigated communities. The social capital accumulated by users increases the community commitment and cohesion by interpreting gifts as a set of resources to distribute fairly. The giving, the receiving and the exchanging are forms of communication that cause further communication and interworking outside of gift-giving situations. These gift-exchange communities are mainly based on the communication and consumption solidarity among individuals.

Conflict in online consumption communities: a systematic literature review and directions for future research

“…Two studies (3%) tested how people in online communities use emoticons to express feelings (Hakala et al, 2017;Tiidenberg, 2016), and one study revealed that this non-verbal communication is an important part of online interactions (Dineva et al, 2017). Nine studies (11%) mentioned including multiple forms of data, such as textual and graphical files (Gebauer et al, 2013); video, photos, and chats ; photographs and screen captures (Torres, 2017); photo galleries from the community (Polukhina & Strelnikova, 2015); voice and video files (Halabi et al, 2017); and pictorial and video footage posted by members ; however, these studies do not give an explanation of or clearly state how to incorporate both text and visuals into an analysis.…”

“…However, we are confident that our systematic and thorough assessment of the selected manuscripts provides a more nuanced, integrated and robust understanding of the field of conflict in online communities. "brand-mediated moral conflict" OR conflict OR "interpersonal conflict" OR "public conflict" OR "consumer conflict" OR "social conflict" OR "online conflicts" OR "conflict culture" OR "heterogeneity in consumer collectives" OR "consumer aggression" OR "consumer revenge" OR "brand tribalism" OR "oppositional brand loyalty" OR "conflict culture" OR trolling OR e-dispute OR "online community conflict" OR "consumer schadenfreude" Keyword theme No.2 (Managing conflict) "conflict resolution" OR "conflict resolution strategies" OR "moderation practices" OR "conflict management" OR "conflict management strategies" OR "online dispute resolution" OR ODR OR "corporate governance" OR "community governance" Keyword theme No.3 (Context) "online brand community" OR "virtual community" OR "online community" OR "consumer communities" OR "social networking sites" OR SNSs OR "brand fan pages" OR "brand fans" OR "consumption communities" OR "communal consumption" OR "consumer collective" -Russia (Polukhina & Strelnikova, 2015) -USA (Boon, Pitt, & Salehi-Sangari, 2015) -Cross-countries (USA, Singapore, India, Sweden) N/A (literature review; conceptualization; or Not explicated stated)…”

“…-Formal rules (e.g. Membership restrictions towards admission to the community; Regulating rights to community resources; Property rights) -Community rules; moderators' execution of formal rules through blacklist (Polukhina & Strelnikova, 2015) -Design system to distribute rewards and incentives; Using of SysBorg 2.0 portal -System of reputation by rating and reviews, number of friends, and duration of membership (Polukhina & Strelnikova, 2015) -Using of technological infrastructure to allow member form smaller group; Rewarding system; Allows member-to-member -The members' handbook and the revenue-sharing model: Clear LOHAS values and rules in the LOHAS Pledge -Value of openness and transparency -Subjective logic of exchange (e.g. the first come, first serve logic; based on individual and situation) (Polukhina & Strelnikova, 2015) -Behavioral guidelines; Norm of reciprocity (with indirect reciprocity) (Boon et al, 2015) 56 -Establishing and enforcing rules and regulations within online communities to prevent malpractice; list of Dos and Don'ts for vendors (Boon et al, 2015) interaction; Encouraging rich and open dialog of conversation (Boon et al, 2015) Reputation -Interpretation and enforcement is done through "Admins" -Assigned of specific roles and the use of power that these members have to resolve conflict (Senior member and operator status) -7 Rules, Policies, and mechanism within the Wikipedia official pages (Butler et al, 2008) -Community rules, and setting up roles (customer service intervention) (Humphreys, 2015) -Setting up rules (K. Xie et al, 2013) -House rules and guidelines -Using of Channel bots in order to monitor and protect people/ knowledgeable member from hacking their server ) -Developing model of The conflict revision Count to help predicting conflict from content; and using of Revert Graph to visualize conflict between users -The 3 designed mechanisms; 1)The watchlists 2) The talk pages and other non-content, and 3)The group consensus (Viégas et al, 2004 (Schau et al, 2009) -Value of justice in outcome and procedure -Perceived fairness & Firm responsiveness (Adjei et al, 2016) -Balancing composition between 2 types of member in peer-to-peer community (wiki) which are content-oriented and communityoriented (Arazy et al, 2011(Arazy et al, , 2013 -Fostering diversity between community members in order to facilitate decision-making & knowledge building (Ferguson & Taminiau, 2014) -Using public shamming, community norms, social etiquette (Humphreys, 2015) -Strong value of consensus and negotiation (Bryant et al, 2005) -The enforcement is done by consensus (with no local authority) -Using Normative & meritocratic governance mech...…”

“…In gift governance , the direct forms of social control such as formal rules and regulations serve as a guideline to help prevent malice and alienation practices related to sharing and exchanging resources in a community. The formal rules represent rules for attribution and individual property rights (Kolbjørnsrud, 2017), lists of dos and don’ts for vendors (Boon et al , 2015) and moderators’ execution of formal rules through blacklist (Polukhina and Strelnikova, 2015). There is an attempt to use technological infrastructure and design to overcome the conflict that is emerged from misbalancing in reciprocity.…”

“…(1) Russia (Polukhina and Strelnikova, 2015) (2) USA (Boon et al, 2015) (3) Cross-countries (USA, Singapore, India, Sweden) (Kolbjørnsrud, 2017) N/A (literature review; conceptualization; or not explicated stated)…”