Recurrent Interactions, Acts of Communication and Emergent Social Practice in Virtual Community Settings

View Sample PDF

Author(s): Demosthenes Akoumianakis (Technological Education Institution of Crete, Greece)
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 27
Source title: Handbook of Research on Methods and Techniques for Studying Virtual Communities: Paradigms and Phenomena
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Ben Kei Daniel (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-040-2.ch003

Keywords: Information Science Reference / Media & Communications / Social Computing / Virtual Communities & Virtual Reality

Purchase

View on the publisher's website for pricing and purchasing information.

Abstract

The chapter builds on recent efforts aiming to develop a conceptual frame of reference for gaining insight to and analyzing ‘practice’ in virtual communities. Following a thorough analysis of related works in new media, community-oriented thinking and practice-based approaches as well as reflections upon recent case studies, the chapter discusses what is it that differentiates offline from online practice, how these two are intertwined in virtual settings and what may be an appropriate methodological frame of reference for analyzing them. In this vein, instead of reproducing arguments for community management (i.e., discovering, forming and sustaining communities) and the underlying methodological challenges commonly encountered in Information Systems research, our effort is focused on understanding emergent social practices through a practice lens framed in technology constituting structures and cultural artifacts. Through a cross case design we formulate the argument that community results from the history of co-engagement of actors in a joint field, while in virtual settings, it is recurrent interactions that lead to an act of communication or the enactment of practice. Our main conclusions are (a) online social practices are shaped through cycles of ‘constructing – negotiating – reconstructing’ cultural artifacts in virtual settings, and (b) practice-oriented toolkits designed to support cycles of ‘constructing – negotiating – reconstructing’ cultural artifacts offer new grounds for understanding innovative engagement by virtual communities.

The IRMA Community

Research IRM

Recurrent Interactions, Acts of Communication and Emergent Social Practice in Virtual Community Settings

Purchase

Abstract

Related Content

IRMA Sponsors