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ABSTRACT
When building a community, whether online or offline, rituals are key. They guide social interaction by expressing standards of behavior and social boundaries through patterned series of symbolic words and acts. With Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a case study, this article demonstrates how post-voting in online discussion forums—including those in education contexts—can both enforce and undermine the development of community precisely because of the ritual power such mechanisms assume, inclusive and exclusive. Anyone seeking to cultivate communities online through the use of discussion forums should be wary of this issue with regard to user interaction.
Notes
1. Coursera and edX specifically stipulated that content generated by users was considered public information for use by others provided that there was no commercial gain and no deliberate attempts to harm or threaten users or the operations of the sites through hacking or other deliberate acts (Coursera, Citation2014b; edX, Citation2013). For Udacity, content was public but had to be paraphrased as, unlike Coursera and edX, it stated that users were “the sole and exclusive owner of any and all rights, title and interest in and to the User Content” (Udacity, Citation2013).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Emily Longstaff
Emily Longstaff is a Sociology PhD candidate at the Australian National University (ANU). She has a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honors in Sociology, also from ANU, as well as a Master of Cross-disciplinary Art and Design from the University of New South Wales.
