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Twitter acts as an information gateway as it provides a place where professionals network and share their knowledge. Twitter has increasingly influenced the way people use and share information. However, limited research demonstrates IT professionals' information experience on Twitter impacts the way they use it for professional purposes. The study aimed to understand how such information experiences impact on the way IT professionals use Twitter for professional purposes. Eleven IT professionals were recruited for this study to understand the participants' information experience through their own individual perspective, with the data analysed using constructive grounded theory. This study revealed that IT professionals' information experience plays a vital role in creating professional networking and knowledge sharing in online spaces. These lived experiences influence the way IT professionals use Twitter for professional purposes. Thus, the findings of this study contribute to theoretical perspectives in the understanding of information experience perspectives within Twitter, along with a foundational understanding of the ways in which microblogging is used for professional purposes. The findings can help organisations understand and provide for this emerging channel of professional information sharing for its staff and stakeholders.

Information grounds are social settings where information, people, and place come together to create information flow within a physical environment (Karen E. Pettigrew, 1998). Information grounds also facilitate the opportunistic discovery of information within social settings created temporarily by people gathered for some purpose other than seeking information, but the social environment stimulates spontaneous information sharing (K. E. Pettigrew, 1999), such as in hair salons, doctor‘s waiting rooms and other public places. Professional and scholarly use of social media is a rapidly emerging area of research. In this regard, qualitative analysis of data gathered from Twitter is a relatively unexplored area of Library and Information Science (LIS) research. This paper details the results of a qualitative study of Twitter using digital ethnography, in order to investigate the use of Twitter by IT professionals in forming communities of practice. This study is relevant to Library and Information Science (LIS) research as LIS professionals are part of the IT community of practice. This study used information grounds theory (K. E. Fisher, 2005) to explore Twitter as an online information ground. The research used online observation – conceptualised here as online ethnography or digital ethnography – and interviews to collect data. The online observations helped the researcher to understand the norms and culture of the participants along with patterns of behaviour. Interviews were used to understand the information grounds of the virtual environment through the participants‘ individual perspectives and their information experiences. A total of eleven participants were interviewed after a total of 734 tweets from these same participants were downloaded and analysed. Both interview and Twitter data were analysed using constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006). The findings highlight a variety of information sharing types, the role of information sharing in professio

This thesis is a study of IT professional’s use of the microblog Twitter. The study shows that, Twitter is more useful for IT experts to connect, communicate and sharing information. Furthermore, the results gave the researcher an overview on the information behaviour and information experience on Twitter, where co-experience occurs by choice rather than by chance. Twitter is not only used for information-seeking and information-sharing, but it is also used as an information ground where the users meet and socialise with others.

Background Twitter is widely used as a communication medium, and an electronic word-of-mouth. A literature search found no previous empirical study of microblogging platforms as “places”, and how they are used for professional communication and networking. Objectives This study aimed to understand information technology (IT) professionals’ information behaviour in microblogging on Twitter. Methods The data were collected using online observation and interviews, and analysed using constructivist grounded theory. Results Twitter is used by IT professionals mainly for professional networking, professional work and professional development. The data highlighted the inter-relatedness of information-sharing and professional networking. Information acts as a trigger to create human networks, as information sharing and information encountering lead to serendipitous discovery of useful IT experts. Twitter is an information ground (Fisher, 2005) where IT professionals encounter not only information but also experts and even work and project opportunities. The more IT professionals share information that is related to his or her expertise, the greater the chance to be noticed and acknowledged as an IT expert. Significance The study has shed some light on how Twitter is used for professional networking in a strategic manner to advance professional goals. The findings can assist organisations to better understand and provide for this emerging channel of professional information-sharing for their staff and stakeholders.

This study aims to explore the use of Twitter for professional purposes. The researcher discovered that Twitter is widely perceived as an information ground in online spaces. Information grounds are social settings where information, people, and places come together to create an information flow within a physical environment. Twitter provides a sense of place as well as a sense of belonging that enables IT professionals to use Twitter for professional development. The data for this study were collected using online observations and interviews. The online observations helped the researcher to distinguish the ‘information behaviours’ (the objective and observable actions) of the participants. The interviews were used to understand the way IT professionals use Twitter for professional purposes through their own individual perspectives. The data were analysed using a constructive grounded theory. The findings show that building professional networking is extremely important to IT professionals; rather than the information-seeking and information-sharing aspects of Twitter. Building professional networking in microblogging has a significant influence on an individual’s professional development. The results also demonstrate that IT professionals are more likely to exploit their weak-ties rather than their strong-ties on Twitter. In short, these users experience Twitter as a real place or ‘information grounds’ where they meet and socialise with experts.

Researchers are increasingly grappling with ways of theorizing social media and its use. This review essay proposes that the theory of Information Grounds (IG) may provide a valuable lens for understanding how social media fosters collaboration and social engagement among information professionals. The paper presents literature that helps us understand how social media can be seen as IG, and maps the characteristics of social media to the seven propositions of IG theory. This work is part of a wider study investigating the ways in which Information Technology (IT) professionals experience social media.

Social media tools are often the result of innovations in Information Technology and developed by IT professionals and innovators. Nevertheless, IT professionals, many of whom are responsible for designing and building social media technologies, have not been investigated on how they themselves use or experience social media for professional purposes. This study will use Information Grounds Theory (Pettigrew, 1998) as a framework to study IT professionals’ experience in using social media for professional purposes. Information grounds facilitates the opportunistic discovery of information within social settings created temporarily at a place where people gather for a specific purpose (e.g., doctors’ waiting rooms, office tea rooms etc.), but the social atmosphere stimulates spontaneous sharing of information (Pettigrew, 1999). This study proposes that social media has the qualities that make it a rich information grounds; people participate from separate “places” in cyberspace in a synchronous manner in real-time, making it almost as dynamic and unplanned as physical information grounds. There is limited research on how social media platforms are perceived as a “place,” (a place to go to, a place to gather, or a place to be seen in) that is comparable to physical spaces. There is also no empirical study on how IT professionals use or “experience” social media. The data for this study is being collected through a study of IT professionals who currently use Twitter. A digital ethnography approach is being taken wherein the researcher uses online observations and “follows” the participants online and observes their behaviours and interactions on social media. Next, a sub-set of participants will be interviewed on their experiences with and within social media and how social media compares with traditional methods of information grounds, information communication, and collaborative environments. An Evolved Grounded Theory (Glaser, 1992) approach will be used to analyse

This paper proposes a theoretical model for e-Government in Malaysia and addresses issues involved in its implementation. It presents three possible models including the Framework for Electronic Government (Grant & Chau, 2005), the Three Pillars Framework (Georgescu, 2007) and The Grid-Group Theory from cultural studies (Douglas, 1996) and integrates and adapts them to the specific needs of the Malaysian environment.