Abstract
The considerable increase in membership of an international Online Reading Group (ORG) for professionals in English Language Teaching (ELT) and its boundary-crossing into other networking sites and tools has prompted this study. Our research is also inspired by a reflection on the historical context of non-online reading groups as well as by recent work on the role of online networking in learning and teaching. After discussing aspects of the pre-online reading group movement we introduce the ORG under study. We then specify what we understand by online networking, state our research questions and construct a case study from the ORG’s origins as a forum, in 2007, to its role as the core of a professional online network today. In this way we aim to contribute to the exploration of online social networking in its relationship to offline activity and online activity in networked spaces that may function alongside the ‘social media’ (as this phrase is understood in the bulk of the present collection).
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