This section begins by briefly summarizing what is known about what motivates consumers to engage in online participation. It is argued that giving consumers an opportunity to engage in collective cognition is a powerful attractor. However, lest it be assumed that high quality collaboration always occurs, two examples of natural socio-psychological processes that explain why collaboration is often suboptimal are described. These considerations are the foundation for this study’s relevance.
Drawing from the realms of economics and sociology, Balasubramanian and Mahajan (2001) explain virtual community participation in terms of individual utility as the sum of three sources of value: (1) focus-related, where the community as a whole benefits from everyone’s contribution, (2) consumption, the benefit individuals receive personally, and (3) approval, the satisfaction from seeing others approve of one’s contributions.
In explaining the emergence of interactive media, like blogs, Jenkins (2006) builds on Balasubramanian’s and Mahajan’s (2001) first source of value by focusing on the phenomenon of fandom, camaraderie between people with common interests, as the basis for an emerging participation culture. This participation culture leverages new technologies that allow “more active modes of spectatorship” (p. 136). Jenkins also builds on Levy’s (1997) concept of collective intelligence, the capacity of human communities to cooperate intellectually in creation, innovation and invention. This capacity often causes self-organized groups to spontaneously emerge around “common intellectual enterprises and emotional investments. Members may shift from one community to another as their interests and needs change, and they may belong to more than one community at the same time. Yet, they are held together through the mutual production and reciprocal exchange of knowledge” (Jenkins, p. 137). However, as the next section describes, communities may also form around deliberately planted intellectual seeds.