Provides an analysis of virtual communities, explaining their lifecycle in terms of maturity-based models and workflows.

Covers the development, design, and utilization of virtual organizations and communities and the resulting impact of these venues.

Technical, Social and Legal Issues in Virtual Communities: Emerging Environments examines a variety of issues related to virtual communities and social networking, addressing issues related to team identification, leader-member issues, social networking for education, participation in social networks, and other issues directly related to this eclectic field of study. This publication provides comprehensive coverage and understanding of the social, cultural, organizational, human, and cognitive issues related to the virtual communities and social networking. Readers will find that this book encompasses an overall body of knowledge regarding participation of individuals, groups and organizations in virtual communities and networks, by providing an outlet for scholarly research in the area.

As well as highlighting potentially useful applications for network analysis, this volume identifies new targets for mathematical research that promise to provide insights into network systems theory as well as facilitating the cross-fertilization of ideas between sectors. Focusing on financial, security and social aspects of networking, the volume adds to the growing body of evidence showing that network analysis has applications to transportation, communication, health, finance, and social policy more broadly. It provides powerful models for understanding the behavior of complex systems that, in turn, will impact numerous cutting-edge sectors in science and engineering, such as wireless communication, network security, distributed computing and social networking, financial analysis, and cyber warfare. The volume offers an insider’s view of cutting-edge research in network systems, including methodologies with immense potential for interdisciplinary application. The contributors have all presented material at a series of workshops organized on behalf of Canada’s MITACS initiative, which funds projects and study grants in ‘mathematics for information technology and complex systems’. These proceedings include papers from workshops on financial networks, network security and cryptography, and social networks. MITACS has shown that the partly ghettoized nature of network systems research has led to duplicated work in discrete fields, and thus this initiative has the potential to save time and accelerate the pace of research in a number of areas of network systems research.

"This book offers a complete look into the field of cyber behavior, surveying case studies, research, frameworks, techniques, technologies, and future developments relating to the way people interact and behave online"--Provided by publisher.

"This book gives in-depth coverage of state-of-the-art research on virtual community participation,covering the concept of virtual community participation, followed by several streams of virtual community participation theories"--Provided by publishe

" "This book provides readers with an up-to-date research manual in developing innovative and effective learning systems using web-based technologies"--Provided by publisher.