On Cue for Leadership Final Paper

TOPIC

The topic for my Final Paper is leadership emergence and roles in virtual communities and the cue comparison for leadership determination between normal verbal and non-verbal cues of face to face communities vs. technological tool cues for virtual communities.

THESIS

With the convergence emergence generation upon us, virtual communities are becoming the latest fashion trend within the scope of computer-mediated communication (CMC), precisely, the environment of the internet. From on-line game communities to fan forum threads, these virtual communities are serving as social, psychological, competitive, and task oriented entities for their participants.

As explained by our convergence model class discussions, these virtual communities provide one of the tools for the continued circulatory motion of concepts within existing technological, cultural, industrial and societal aspect layers of our lives:

• Highly participative cultures where the use, influence, centralized and collective intelligence are utilized to maintain the communities;
• Consumer up/Producer down transactions – online discussion threads utilized for marketing techniques that offer incentives such as rewards for number of postings and producers of goods and services utilize discussion comments to influence their business decisions; and
• On-line personal media content that’s portable and able to travel.

I contend that because these virtual communities are relevant to convergence models and its noted concepts, their intricacies, as a community group, recognize the traditional hierarchal concept of emergence of leadership within their realms and this traditional leader-role emergence within the confines of the on-line CMC utilizes cyber-based context to determine leadership selection rather than normal face to face verbal and non-verbal cues of leadership determination.

Articles:

Blanchard, A. (2004). Virtual behavior settings: an application of behavior setting
Theories to virtual communities. MCMC 9 (2) January 2004. Retrieved
February 20, 2009 from: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue2/blanchard.html

Summary – An overview and discussion of CMC virtual communities in terms of what participant needs they fill, characteristics of their technology, theory of virtual behavior settings, participants in terms of the virtual behavior settings, and the types of members the behavior settings attract and the allowance of types such as leaders and participants.

Clippinger, Dr. J. Leadership. Retrieved February 11, 2009 from:
www.dodcrp.org/files/Leadership.pdf

Summary – A discussion of leadership in the context of “network leadership roles” such as “alpha member, gatekeeper, visionary, truth-teller, fixer, connector, enforcer and facilitator. Each role is examined within a networking framework.

Kelly, E., Davis, B., Nelson, J., and Mendoza, J. (2008) Leader emergence in an Internet
Environment ScienceDirect, Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008), 2372-2383.
Doi:10.1016/jchb.2008.02.013. Retrieved February 20, 2009 from: www.sciencedirect.com

Summary – A look at how individual leadership emergence takes place within an Internet environment looking at technology tools such as emoticons, web-based initializations, and technical speak for the entities that predict leadership emergence vs. the normal verbal and nonverbal cues of face to face community contact.

Relationship to Thesis

The three articles are related to my thesis because they cover three foundational aspects of my paper, defining traditional networking leadership roles and their expected behaviors, recognized virtual communities behavior settings and the culmination of these two aspects for emergence of leadership within the Internet environment utilizing technology tools vs. the normally expected verbal and non-verbal cues for leadership.