온라인 커뮤니티 참가자의 유형과 구분요인에 관한 연구: 개인적 특성 요인을 중심으로

This study classifies online community participants into the most appropriate number of groups using the 2015 and 2016 original data of the Korea Media Panel Survey conducted by the Korea Institute of Information and Communications Policy. And also this paper empirically analyzes how personal characteristics such as self-esteem, personality and need for cognition differs among user groups. Based on four activities - reading, commenting, scrapping, and writing -, four groups were considered to be most appropriate number of group representing online community landscape of Korea. These four groups are named lurker(40.8%), diffuser(26.7%), enthusiasts(16.4%) and core activists (16.1%). Diffuser have a high proportion of scrap activities to spread information to the outside of the community, while enthusiasts focus on reading and commenting for sharing information within the community. Having analyzed the effects of individual factors(self-esteem, personality traits and need for cognition) on grouping, the higher the self-esteem, the higher the oddz to be grouped into the enthusiast group compared to other groups. As for personality traits, the more open, the more likely one belongs to lurkers, diffusers or core activists than enthusiasts. The more conscientious, the more likely he or she is to belong to the lurkers, and this is the same for the nervousness. Need for cognition was the most powerful and consistent factor to distinguish different groups.
The higher the need for cognition, the more likely it was to be included in the more active groups.