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

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.