Stronger Together: How Neighborhood Groups Build up a Virtual Network during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

During crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, people spontaneously initiate support groups, while established organizations like soccer clubs set non-regular goals, both offering help. Interested in the coordination of such help and potential challenges of collaboration, we conducted a virtual ethnography of a multi-level network located in Germany. We focused on aims, activities, and technological mediation, with Activity Theory as theoretical framework. Our findings show that the organizational aim of coordinating help was successfully achieved by connecting heterogeneous actors through digitization and institutionalization. Enabled by the context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the network acted virtually, but was also able to integrate analog spaces of help. We identified six crucial implications regarding the use of technology and collaboration for building a successful volunteering network.

“We’ll dance harder and love deeper”: LGBTQIA+ resilience and resistance during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Adapting one’s mindset was a strategy for surviving day-to-day, finding distractions, and also drawing boundaries around social media and news engagement; recent research has highlighted the challenges of news and social media consumption for adult mental health during the pandemic ( Liu et al, 2021 ; Nguyen et al, 2021 ). The need to adapt daily activities and to forge connections online led participants to use technologies in new ways, both to carve out individual connections and to re-imagine community activities ( Haesler et al, 2021 ). Social work practitioners who work with LGBTQIA+ communities can highlight the community building aspects of online platforms, such as gaming with other LGBTQIA+ people on Discord or finding online social and/or support groups that are specific to LGBTQIA+ communities.…”

A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed? Analysis of the Willingness to Share Self-Produced Electricity During a Long-lasting Power Outage

“…At the same time, the crisis was also characterized by various forms of prosocial behaviour (Haesler et al. 2021 ). Studies showed that a significant motive for such altruistic acting was empathy (Christner et al.…”

“…Partly, individuals could not manage their lives on their own anymore, and thus received help from related or unrelated others (Haesler et al. 2021 ). Leveraging this circumstance, we created a variable Help_Received equalling 1 if the respondent had received help during the COVID-19 pandemic as a measure for the hypothesized reciprocal motives (Trivers 1971 ).…”

Collectives and Their Artifact Ecologies

“…Though some work has looked at and still shows interest in the online presence of physical communities [e.g. 27,38,44], the majority of contemporary work in CSCW focuses on communities that are defined by their online existence [77]. This orientation toward online communities is evident when reviewing recent CSCW works, with an extensive focuses on studying communities on social media and their usage [e.g.…”