Lurker
In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community who observes, but does not participate by posting or commenting. The exact definition depends on context. Lurkers make up a large proportion of all users in online communities. Lurking allows users to learn the conventions of an online community before they participate, improving their socialization when they eventually "de-lurk". However, a lack of social contact while lurking sometimes causes loneliness or apathy among lurkers.
Lurkers are referred to using many names, including browsers, read-only participants, non-public participants, legitimate peripheral participants, vicarious learners, or sleepers.
History
Since the beginning of computer-mediated communication lurking has been a concern for community members. The term "lurk" can be traced back to when it was first used during the 14th century. The word referred to someone who would hide in concealment, often for an evil purpose. In the mid-1980s, the word started to be applied to the Internet when bulletin board systems became popular. The bulletin boards were accessed through a single phone line that users would call to upload files and post comments to share with the community. It was expected that those using the system and consuming resources would contribute. Because lurkers would keep the phone line busy for extended periods of time without contributing anything, they were often viewed negatively and would be barred by the system operator who managed the BBS.Today, lurkers are viewed both positively and negatively. In many communities lurkers are still seen as free-riders. They are perceived as a drain on the public goods since they "take without giving back." However, some communities encourage newbies to lurk.
By lurking, newbies can learn more about the culture of the community, understand the community's social norms, and become familiar with the key members of the community. Lurkers are also viewed positively in present-day communities because they provide an audience for the mass media. The presence of lurkers is often the justification for receiving advertising support.
Lurkers are often hard to track in computer-mediated communities. Because they are not posting and mostly just read content, they leave behind few traces that can be tracked. In open source project communities, it is estimated that at any point in time, 50% to 90% of the community may be lurkers. Depending on the community, this may be consistent with the 90-9-1 principle.
Rationale
Lurkers lurk rather than participate for a variety of reasons. A majority of lurkers profess that they lurk simply because they think that browsing is enough for them. Users also choose to lurk in order to find examples to follow when they decide to participate, avoid making redundant posts or contributions, and learn more about the topics of conversation. A lurker's need to learn about the community before contributing also explains why almost twice as many users lurk on technical support communities where more information is required to post as compared to health support communities. Researchers have shown that different motivations underlie reading, contributing, and moderating web forums. Pure lurkers more often are motivated by the fact that the community is the only place to find a certain kind of content, while moderators and contributors are motivated by either duty or feelings of attachment. Lurking on social media can also be a form of receptive reading, whereby users seek to understand the opinions of those with a divergent point of view.In much of the published literature, "lurking" is treated as a personal trait. However, concepts of legitimate peripheral participation and "de-lurking" suggest that lurking may be more situational than dispositional. In a study of online communities in which it was possible to see the total membership list, researchers were able to count the number of members who were public participants in one community while remaining silent or non-public participants in another community. 84% of the members fit this mixed pattern, indicating that people choose whether to lurk or to contribute on a per-community basis.
Potential benefits
Lurker benefits
Lurking behavior provides some benefits to users. Mo and Coulson found that lurkers on an online support group for HIV/AIDS did not differ from posters in their levels of care, self-efficacy, optimism, depression, and loneliness. They also found that lurkers felt more energetic than posters.In a study that addressed lurking in E-learning, scholars found evidence that lurking is a helpful type of participation in online courses. Students said that the most common reasons they lurked before posting were to discover a message to reply to, to identify a model to adopt, to bypass providing a similar reply, and to acquire knowledge regarding the topic. Students in this study also expressed that they came back to read posts on online course discussion boards in order to check whether others had responded to their posts or to review a previous concept.
Learning community social norms
One reason lurkers lurk is the need to learn more about the group. In interviews, lurkers claim a lack of understanding of the community as a reason for not posting. Lurkers often take the time before posting to evaluate the group for how well it is a fit for them. Lurkers learn more about the individuals in the group, the dialogue styles, and the implicit norms and explicit policies. In the interviews, lurkers mentioned that this was their preferred method so that they could avoid making a mistake and being rejected by the group.To determine if the group is a good fit and to learn more about the norms, lurkers will read most if not all of the posts. By reading the posts, lurkers develop a better understanding about the topics being discussed and if this is a good fit for them. Lurkers will also examine email addresses and signatures with associated websites so get a better understanding of the other members of the group.
By taking these steps, lurkers gain more cultural capital. Soroka and Raffaeli define cultural capital as "the knowledge that enables an individual to interpret various cultural codes." In other words, it is the knowledge of the norms of the community. They found that people that lurk longer before posting had greater levels of cultural capital. A lurker can gain cultural capital in a community just by spending a lot of time in it. A person that has more cultural capital will benefit more from the community.
Benefits for others
In their study on interactive mailing lists, Takahashi, Fujimoto, and Yamasaki demonstrated that "active lurkers", or individuals who spread content from an online group to individuals external to the online group, help spread beneficial information to surrounding communities.Lurkers can also develop stores of valuable knowledge as they lurk which may be helpful later should they decide to contribute. For example, users in open source software communities can quickly discover the answers to common problems, making them more likely to contribute answers later. If they have already had a question answered, they are even more likely to de-lurk and reciprocate. These behaviors form the backbone of open source technical support.
Lurkers also help reduce the burden on communities. A person who may have a question for a community may be better served searching for the answer than forcing community members to expend effort to see and respond to their query. In the case of open source project communities, the vast majority of questions have already been asked and answered in the community, making any repeated questions wasted work.
Pragmatically, lurkers also provide revenue for communities as they access pages, generating advertising revenue.
Potential costs
Lurker costs
Lurkers experience less belonging in a community compared to regular contributors. They are less satisfied and experience more distractions. This means that lurkers are predisposed to leave before making a contribution because they lack the motivation that belonging and satisfaction bring. In the case of social networking websites, lurkers experience less intimacy and personal well-being. Lurkers on Facebook can experience loneliness as they watch other, more social members of the community participate.Costs for others
Lurkers can also negatively influence other community members. If community members can see that someone is lurking rather than participating, they may feel that they are being spied upon. Lurkers might also take pieces of content featured in communities without seeking consent, violating the rules of the community. As a result, while individuals in online communities may feel that they are experiencing private interactions, a lurker may see it as a public space for observation due to their reduced feelings of belonging. This can become quite extreme in more intimate communities such as chat rooms where lurkers are more obvious. Hudson and Bruckman entered IRC chatrooms as experimenters and either posted a message stating they were logging the chat, an opt-in message for logging, and opt-out message, or nothing at all. 63.3% of chat rooms kicked out the experimenters after they gave any sort of message, demonstrating a dislike of explicit chat logging. However, 29% of rooms kicked out the experimenters even though they did not post anything, showing a disregard for lurkers.Free-riding
Lurking is just one form of free-riding that can happen within an Internet community, and is similar to asking questions without responding, or gathering information without distributing it. Lurking is seen as undesirable to communities because of the risk free-riding can have on the community if every member does it. A public good is something that is impossible to exclude someone from and has a joint supply within the community. An Internet community is seen as a public good because it is a pool of data to which people may, if they choose, separately contribute information. The survival of the community is then dependent on the contributions of the members.Since it is impossible to exclude members from sharing in the benefit of the public good, people are more motivated to free-ride on the work of the other members and not contribute themselves. As a group grows in size, the likelihood of free-riding increases. Individuals are less likely to contribute if they do not view their contribution as making a visible difference and if they expect the other members to provide enough content to reach the desired effect.
A lurker may withhold information because when they contribute, it benefits everyone in the community except for themselves. When everyone then chooses to withhold information, the collective benefit is no longer produced. With more people free-riding, it is more difficult to produce useful information and interactions among the group members. The group will then not have enough resources to attract new members and retain current members.
Lurking can also cost site holders money if they do not use advertising to generate revenue. The bandwidth costs of lurkers visiting a site may outstrip the value that donors or contributors provide to a community.