1. A structuration approach to online communities of practice: The case of Q&A communities.
- Author
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Rosenbaum, Howard and Shachaf, Pnina
- Subjects
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STRUCTURATION theory , *INFORMATION resources management , *ONLINE social networks , *INFORMATION retrieval , *INFORMATION services , *INTERMEDIATION (Finance) - Abstract
This article describes an approach based on structuration theory (Giddens,
1979 1984 ; Orlikowski,1992 2000 ) and communities of practice (Wenger,1998 ) that can be used to guide investigation into the dynamics of online question and answer (Q&A) communities. This approach is useful because most research on Q&A sites has focused attention on information retrieval, information-seeking behavior, and information intermediation and has assumed uncritically that the online Q&A community plays an important role in these domains of study. Assuming instead that research on online communities should take into account social, technical, and contextual factors (Kling, Rosenbaum, & Sawyer,2005 ), the utility of this approach is demonstrated with an analysis of three online Q&A communities seen as communities of practice. This article makes a theoretical contribution to the study of online Q&A communities and, more generally, to the domain of social reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]- Published
- 2010
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