Rethinking Organizing in the Social Web – the Case of Wikipedia
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Benedikt Peter Fecher Rethinking Organizing in the Social Web the case of Wikipedia 1 2 Rethinking Organizing Abstract in the Social Web The internet and the social web allow individuals to form informal collaborative networks. These challenge Organization Studies with the case of Wikipedia intrinsically new premises for participation and collaboration, such as highly varying degrees of involvement, a multitude of loosely- coupled users with diverse backgrounds and most importantly an inherent openness. Despite the conceptual backlog and the growing empirical relevance, digital open organizations (as I call them in this thesis) are yet widely unnoticed by organizational researchers. The study at hand therefore approaches a new understanding for participation and collaboration in the social web – based on a modification of Bourdieu’s theory of practice for the social web and an inductive analysis of a typical case, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. My findings suggest that digital open organizing is signified by a core community of engaged users. These adopt tasks that exceed the primary practice of the organization (in my case editing) and turn towards actions that concern the overall functioning of the practice (e.g. administrative work). Moreover, this community spadework allows inexperienced and one-time users to partake in the Aalborg University / July 10, 2012 Master thesis practice in the first place, which is of Culture, Communication and Globalization vital importance considering that Specialization: Organization and Leadership single contributions account for Supervisor: Peter Hervik most of the work (here edits). 3 Rethinking Organizing in the Social Web – the case of Wikipedia Table of Contents Digital gardens ........................................................................................................................................ 5 Why we need a new understanding for collaboration and participation in the digital sphere ............. 7 A social constructionist approach to digital gardening ....................................................................... 10 Dealing with multiple realities .......................................................................................................... 10 Organization as communicative process .......................................................................................... 12 Why I am gardener ........................................................................................................................... 13 A constructionist touch on analytic induction ..................................................................................... 15 Towards conceptual categories for collaboration in DOOs ................................................................. 18 Tilling the field – the social web as an emerging field .................................................................... 18 Mediatization as practice .............................................................................................................. 18 Features of the social web and their implications for DOOs ....................................................... 19 Field, habitus and capital in a DOO .................................................................................................. 23 The social web as a digital field ................................................................................................... 23 Digital habitus as a behavioral constraint .................................................................................... 25 Digital capital: The currency in a DOO ........................................................................................ 27 The downfall of economic capital ............................................................................................ 28 Cultural capital – embodied knowledge as key capital ........................................................... 30 Social capital ............................................................................................................................. 32 Putting the parts together ................................................................................................................. 35 Arriving at conceptual categories for digital open organizing ............................................................ 37 Varying levels and forms of participation .................................................................................... 37 Identification and participation ..................................................................................................... 38 Participation and digital habitus ................................................................................................... 38 Wikipedia as a typical case for digital open organizing ...................................................................... 39 Just before analyzing Wikipedia ........................................................................................................... 41 Choosing the sub-cases..................................................................................................................... 41 Choosing the units of analysis .......................................................................................................... 42 Operationalization and tools for investigation ................................................................................. 43 Analyzing patterns of participation and collaboration at Wikipedia ................................................... 44 Varying levels of participation .......................................................................................................... 45 4 A few work a lot – most is done by many ................................................................................... 45 Minor edits and semiautomatic caretakers ................................................................................... 48 Situative activation of top contributors ........................................................................................ 53 Importance of single edits............................................................................................................. 55 Identification, identity and participation .......................................................................................... 56 Profiles and user accounts in token of involvement in the practice ............................................ 56 Contextual participation and positions in the field ...................................................................... 58 The central role of the community ............................................................................................... 60 Groups of interest – specialized workforces in the digital garden .......................................... 61 Meta-tasks – some users do more than just editing ................................................................. 63 Social recognition – acknowledging and displaying individual achievements ....................... 65 Profiling the self ............................................................................................................................ 67 Digital habitus and participation ...................................................................................................... 70 Editing coordination is expert business ........................................................................................ 71 Almost-absence of interaction and outdatedness of edits on the respective talk pages ......... 72 The assignment of articles to related WikiProjects .................................................................. 72 Subtle legalism: The role of policies and guidelines at Wikipedia .............................................. 75 Analysis synopsis .................................................................................................................................. 77 Community as the key for open practices ........................................................................................ 77 Forms of participation ....................................................................................................................... 78 Inclinations to participate ................................................................................................................. 79 Contextual leadership and pragmatic hierarchy............................................................................... 80 Back in the garden ................................................................................................................................ 81 Relating to other studies on Wikipedia ................................................................................................ 84 Future organizational research on digital open organizing ................................................................. 85 List of references ................................................................................................................................... 87 List of figures ........................................................................................................................................ 93 Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 95 5 “... you cannot build network organizations on electronic networks alone.... If so, ... we will probably need an entirely new sociology of organizations.”