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Developing Virtual Social Communities: Lessons Drawn from Two Indian Social Communities

Authors:
Schubert Foo
Samantha Vu
Natalie Pang
Shweta Verma

Keywords: social tools; community; Bohra; East Indian; Mumbai; online portal; social innovation; community engagement; knowledge; cultural identity; trust

Abstract:
This paper presents two case studies of how the Bohra community and the East Indian community in Mumbai, India make use of social tools that include their own customized community online portals, Facebook and YouTube to create and manage social content for their respective communities. The aim is to contrast and identify learning points with regard to the usefulness and effectiveness of social tools for community engagement, and to infer design and development factors for building social innovations for communities in the future. The findings suggest that five areas are of particular importance: (1) Content and knowledge creation, (2) Preservation of cultural identity, (3) Design for social structures, (4) Engendering community trust, and (5) Adapting appropriate integrated-hybrid models.

Pages: 56 to 62

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2012

Publication date: July 22, 2012

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4162

ISBN: 978-1-61208-220-2

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from July 22, 2012 to July 27, 2012