FreshNetworks Blog

I’m speaking next week at the International eParticipation Symposium in London on the subject of Citizen Empowerment: Where do we begin?. I shan’t try to crack this here (you can wait for my write-up of the session next week) but the subject of the conference did make provoke some discussion here at FreshNetworks about how communities online differ from a more traditional use of the work ‘community’ to mean a geographically defined set of individuals.

The simplest definition of a community seems to be that it is a set of people with a similar characteristic of some kind (location being one of these, but it could be a sense of identity or some common interest), but this does not seem to go far enough. Indeed we can think of many sets of people who share characteristics but couldn’t be considered a community. Is everybody who files their Income Tax online a coherent community despite having a shared experience? Do I necessarily form part of a meaningful community with everybody who lives in the same area of London as me? The answer to both of these is ‘probably no’. ‘Probably’ because we need to test whether or not other criteria are met.

In total we think there are five broad criteria that need to be understood when thinking about a community:

1. how does the individual form part of a community and how does the community form part of the individual? I need to talk about myself as being a member of the community as much as the community defines itself as having me as a member.

2. what commonality does the community share? Do we share a common purpose or a common interest?

3. to what extent is the community open or closed? Can others join the community or even know that it exists?

4. is the community built around harmony or difference? Do members have similar or opposing opinions about this commonality?

5. is the community artificial or natural? Was it created by others or did it grow organically?

Only if we can discuss these five aspects of a community can we really begin to talk about it in these terms and when we examine these terms a set of types of communities emerge. I’m currently writing a paper on this so more details on this will be posted at a later stage but for now I thought I’d outline how research communities, like those built and managed by FreshNetworks, can be defined.

Of the five characteristics above it is the bottom two that are of pivotal importance in creating effective research communities.

Communities of harmony have only one voice; they are conformist and conservative and whilst they may share a common purpose of intent they also share common opinions about and reactions to this. These communities do not generate new ideas but norm towards a Leibnizian best of all possible worlds. By contrast, a community of difference (as distinct from dissonance) does not represent the status quo or an idealised state. It raises disagreement and differences where traditional market research techniques has tended to harmony not difference.

Research can only uncover the most insightful and actionable findings when participants enter into a debate amongst themselves. When disagreement forces them to defend their opinions and define how their views and responses vary from other community members, you begin to get real insight and innovations. Ideas are generated and community members work together to resolve problems and differences, rather than not raising these in the first place as too often can be the case with market research. A community of difference provides more fruitful ground for innovation and client insights.

Communities of difference only work if they are natural, or if they are artificial communities which have become natural over time. This is the key to an effective research community – it functions as a community of members brought together by shared interests and aims not as collection of individual respondents who may be brought together in a focus group or panel. Or indeed in some, supposed ‘research communities’. Developing a group of individuals into a natural community is difficult and is where a skilled moderator and qualitative researcher is critical. One who understands how communities function, one who appreciates the different community types and one who has experience of what makes a successful and a less successful community.

However, overall the most successful communities, and those that are of most use from a research perspective, are those where both the researcher (and brand) and community members themselves derive a significant benefit from membership. This is what turns a network of respondents into a community; what makes a community of responses into one of ideas and innovation; and what can help to transform qualitative and market research both in terms of how we do it but also what is possible.