1. The Dynamics of Web-Based Community Safety Groups: Lessons Learned from the Nation of Neighbors The Dynamics of Web-Based Community Safety Groups: Lessons Learned from the Nation of Neighbors Awalin Sopan, P.J. Rey, Jae-wook Ahn, Catherine Plaisant, Alan Neustadtl, Ben Shneiderman @awalinsopan Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland

2. Watch Jefferson County Community members Law Enforcement Law Enforcement Collaboration Success

3. Nation of Neighbors Online neighborhood crime watch platform. Members sharing neighborhood crime information. Online neighborhood crime watch platform. Members sharing neighborhood crime information. Report Post, Reply Invite, Accept Report Post, Reply Invite, Accept

4. Nation of Neighbors Website

5. NoN Reporting Interface

6. Computer Scientists Social Scientists Community Managers Combined Forces

7. 1. What constitutes a successful community ? 2. Who are the influential members ? 3. How does the community dynamics change over time ? Research Questions

8. 1. Successful Communities Brainstorm with community manager. Define metrics to assess the communities: Active Months Number of Members Total Activity Interaction Intensity Integrate the metrics in ManyNets.

9. Communities in ManyNets members

10. Communities in ManyNets activities

11. Communities in ManyNets Interaction Intensity

12. Activities in Communities Activities in Communities InvitationReport Distribution of Activity type All Communities Successful Communities

13. Fewer members, more invitations. - New communities focus on recruiting members. More members, more reports. 22% of participation were anonymous. Activities in Communities

14. 2. Influential People 2. Influential People Leaders: Highly active members Contributing to a large portion of the total activity.

15. 2. Influential People 2. Influential People Leaders invite new people to community. Invitation Distribution of Activity types of leaders

16. Leaders and Growth No of Leaders Member growth per month 00.6 12.7 25.5 Regression analysis result

17. Leaders and Non-leaders Non-leaders Post Non-leaders Report Non-leaders Invites Non-leaders mean activity per month Leaders Post 1.0 Leaders Report 2.7 Leaders Invites 1.1 Number of Leaders 2.7 Regression analysis result

18. Existence of leaders increases participation of members and growth of community. 16 communities have leaders. None of them has any Law Enforcement official. Leaders make Difference Leaders make Difference

19. Sort activities from a community into bins by month. Display monthly activities on separate rows. 3. Dynamics over Time 3. Dynamics over Time

20. Reports became the most prevalent activity over time. Invitation decreased over time. Time

21. Take Away Messages for Take Away Messages for Community Managers Community Managers Leaders Reports Promote leadership among citizens Promote leadership among citizens Successful community Integrate with popular social media Visual analytics to understand communities

22. We cordially thank Art Hanson, Nation of Neighbor NSF (grant # IIS - 0968521) http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/NON/ awalin@cs.umd.edu