Developing virtual social communities : lessons drawn from two Indian social communities

• Main Authors: Pang, Natalie, Foo, Schubert, Vu, Samantha, Verma, Shweta
• Other Authors: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Journalism::Reporting on community
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/95806; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/10036; http://www.thinkmind.org/index.php?view=article&articleid=content_2012_3_30_60092
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

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 area are of perticular 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.