Report on Online Communities: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Eval

This report provides an in-depth analysis of online communities, focusing on their advantages, disadvantages, and overall evaluation. It begins by defining online communities and highlighting their benefits, such as enhanced communication and the ability to connect with customers effectively. The report then delves into the drawbacks, including potential technical issues, data security concerns, and the limitations of face-to-face interaction. The evaluation section examines the impact of social polarization and the role of online communities in business development, emphasizing their ability to streamline tasks and improve employee-customer relations. The report concludes by referencing key studies that support the arguments presented, making it a valuable resource for understanding the dynamics and implications of online communities.

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Online Communities

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Advantages of online communities
The online community is defined as a network of consumers who come together and
interact online through internet connections. The major advantage of an online community
is that it can be accessed from any location and employees can communicate with the
customers effectively without any face to face communication. A recent study identified
that the online community is more able and reliable that has the potential to connect
employees with customers and also provide a new platform to the companies where they
can enhance their performance (Kraut, & Resnick, 2012). Moreover, such kind of
community is able to manage numbers of tasks at a time and maintain the bonds between
management and employees where they can contact any time from any location. Therefore,
it is observed that another advantage of an online community is that it reduces time and
frustration among the employees as they might be caught up while managing their time
(Sun, Rau, & Ma, 2014).
Disadvantages of online communities
It is identified that the major drawback of the online community is that the
employees may suffer from the technical and communication issue due to which the
employees may suffer from distortion. Moreover, the security of data is a key limitation of
the online community in which the organizations may suffer from the data breach related
issues. A recent study argued that the online community does not provide face to face
communication due to which the employees may not evaluate and analyze the expression
of the consumers. Moreover, the online community can lead to miscommunication in the
companies and may impact on the customer relations towards the businesses. The other
drawback of the online community is that it can increase conflicts in the family members
because the consumers cannot provide their effective times to the family members.
Evaluation of online communities

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According to Mitch Parsell, extremely narrow focus contribute to social polarization
which is true in the context of online communities. It is identified that polarizing of
attitudes can occur on socially significant problems and in the case of online communities
most of the companies extremely focus on the several sections which may lead to social
polarization in the workplace. Therefore, it is stated that the arguments highlighted by
Mitch Parsell are effective and true that also highlighted key aspects related to the online
communities (Zhu, Kraut, & Kittur, 2012).
It is argued that online communities have enhanced business community life
effectively because it provides a platform where the employees can communicate with
their customers and help for improving their performance (Roberts, 2015). Moreover, it is
observed that the online community reduce complexity from the workplace and handle
numbers of tasks at a time which can lead community life in an appropriate manner.
Therefore, from the perspective of business, the online community is more reliable and
efficient that can be adopted by the companies for growing their productivity.

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References
Kraut, R. E., & Resnick, P. (2012). Building successful online communities: Evidence-based
social design. MIT Press.
Roberts, L. D. (2015). Ethical issues in conducting qualitative research in online
communities. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 12(3), 314-325.
Sun, N., Rau, P. P. L., & Ma, L. (2014). Understanding lurkers in online communities: A
literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 38, 110-117.
Zhu, H., Kraut, R., & Kittur, A. (2012). Effectiveness of shared leadership in online
communities. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work, 12(8), 407-416).