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doi:10.1111/j.1365-2575.2008.00304.x Info Systems J (2008) 19, 55–81 55 Exploring the dynamics of blog communities: the case of MetaFilter Leiser Silva*, Lakshmi Goel† & Elham Mousavidin‡ *C. T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, USA, email: [email protected], †C. T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, USA, email: [email protected], and ‡[email protected] Abstract. This paper explores the social processes and mechanisms that give form to a prominent type of online community: community blogs. We conducted an interpretive study that examines a particular community blog, MetaFilter, by drawing on the concepts of communities of practice as a theoretical lens. Theo- retically, we contribute to the body of knowledge of online communities by identi- fying the structures of an emergent type of community that is brought together by blog technology. Our findings suggest that cohesion in a community blog is brought about by the following practices: (a) explicit ground rules regarding mem- bership, (b) presence of moderators, (c) availability of profile information, (d) ‘net etiquette’, (e) tacit warrants for discerning pertinent posts, and (f) the deployment of specific techniques of discipline. Keywords: blogs, communities of practice, knowledge management, Web 2.0, virtual communities, interpretive research INTRODUCTION The advent of the internet has created new venues for communication and social exchanges. These venues, such as forums and newsgroups, are the focal point for the creation of new types of interactions among individuals that take the form of virtual communities (Komito, 1998; Etzioni & Etzioni, 1999; Bakardjieva & Feenberg, 2002; Wilson & Peterson, 2002). Yet, despite the fact that the total number of these electronically enabled communities grows almost exponentially, little is known about the mechanisms and processes that shape them (Ridings et al., 2002). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the social dynamics that provide identity and cohesion to a prominent new type of online community: a blog community. A weblog (or blog) is a self-publishing website that is updated on a regular basis. The word ‘blog’ has been defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as ‘a web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks’ and has been identi- fied as the most looked-up word in the year 2004 (BBCNews, 2004). Approximately 70 million blogs were being tracked in March 2007 by Technorati, a real-time search engine that © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 56 L Silva et al. maintains updated information on blogs, with 120 000 new blogs being created every day. Contents of a blog are written in a casual manner and are archived reverse chronologically (Blood, 2002). The posts are usually brief, with links to other blogs or websites on the internet. The particular style of writing and publishing in blogs can be classified as a communication genre (Orlikowski & Yates, 1994; Herring et al., 2005). A genre in this sense is constituted by typified acts of communication. Herring et al. (2005) distinguish weblogs from other internet- related genres such as webpages and chat rooms. Weblogs are different given that their communication acts are asynchronous and asymmetrical. They are asynchronous because communications do not occur in real time as with instant messaging (IM) and chat rooms. They are asymmetrical because communications do not occur in dyads as in IM but take place among more than two individuals. Hence, weblogs, because of their unique way of being written, updated and linked to, constitute a unique communication genre. In addition to these attributes, Herring et al. (2005) claim that the proliferation of weblogs is the result of two main technological features. One is the capability of weblog software of not requiring users to know HTML programming to own and publish a weblog. The other is the capability of the software to allow publishing comments instantaneously. Furthermore, the popularity of weblogs can be explained by the fact that, unlike chat rooms and IM, web pages are indexed in search engines, which allows any internet user to access them directly. Blogs have been classified in different ways, for example, as diaries, journals, and commu- nity columns (Blood, 2000; 2004; Krishnamurthy, 2002; Miller et al., 2004; Hartelius, 2005; Herring et al., 2005; Nowson & Oberlander, 2007). While the terminologies of the typologies differ, all of them recognize the difference between individual- and community-based blogs. For our study, we focus on community blogs. The essence of a blog of this type is that its content is defined collectively (Krishnamurthy, 2002; Hartelius, 2005; Herring et al., 2005). The collective nature of community blogs raises interesting social dynamics such as the establish- ing of rules of membership, the negotiation of identities, and the struggles to distinguish what is worth publishing from what is not. Hence, the objective of this research is to make sense of those dynamics. Concretely, this paper aims at exploring the rules of membership, the constitutive practices, as well as the mechanisms for negotiating meanings and identities that configure a blog community. The identification of those social processes will provide us with an initial theoretical account of how these communities are structured and are able to remain cohesive. This will be of value not only for researchers who focus on the relationship between technology and society, but also for organizations interested in applying these types of technologies to bolster the generation and the sharing of knowledge. To achieve our research objective, we examine a specific blog – MetaFilter – that has been characterized as a community blog (Krishnamurthy, 2002; Herring et al., 2005). Accordingly, the empiric basis of this research is the posts available in the archives of the blog. As our main research question concerns the exploration of social processes, we decided to adopt an interpretivist research strategy (Taylor, 1971; Sanders, 1982; Walsham, 1993). For the orga- nization and analysis of the data, we use a theoretical lens that draws on the literature of communities of practice (CoPs) (Brown & Duguid, 1991; 1998); Lave, 1991; Lave & Wenger, © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Information Systems Journal 19, 55–81 Blog communities and MetaFilter 57 1991; Wenger, 1998; 2000; Wenger & Snyder, 2002; Wenger et al., 2002), which has also been widely acknowledged and applied by researchers in the information systems field (Wasko & Faraj, 2000; Markus, 2001; Mathiassen & Purao, 2002; Butler, 2003; Pan & Leidner, 2003; Gallivan et al., 2005). Thus, given the emphasis CoPs lay on knowledge sharing, identity and membership, we believe that this theoretical lens is appropriate for the purpose of interpreting the phenomenon of blogging. The results of the study are presented through analytical generalizations (Walsham, 1993; Lee & Baskerville, 2003), and their implications are discussed in the context of organizations that may be interested in adopting blog technology for enabling CoPs. THEORETICAL LENS In this section, we present our theoretical lens that, as indicated above, is derived from the CoPs literature (Brown & Duguid, 1991; 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Lave, 1991; Wenger, 1998; 2000; Wenger & Snyder, 2002; Wenger et al., 2002). The term ‘community of practice’ is difficult to define; however, Wenger (1998) offers a clear formulation. Wenger (1998, p. 72) indicates that CoPs can be identified because of a distin- guished practice that is more salient than other attributes, such as activity, culture or structure. A CoP is not a network, team or group. It is different from a network because a CoP is not defined by established relationships. Likewise, it is defined neither by membership of a group nor by proximity. Instead, the source of coherence of a community is its practice. Wenger illustrates the concept through a community of claim processors in an insurance company, who, in addition to sharing a practice, are interested in improving their working conditions. While we do not claim that blog communities are CoPs – in the precise sense described by Wenger and his colleagues – we posit that they are communities defined and kept together by specific practices. CoPs as a theory has been subjected to critiques. In particular, researchers have argued that it ignores issues concerning trust (Roberts, 2006), power (Blackler & McDonald, 2000; Fox, 2000; Contu & Willmott, 2003; Walsham, 2005), predispositions (Mutch, 2003), size and spatial reach (Coe & Bunnell, 2003; Roberts, 2006). While these are valid concerns, we have discussed our findings with the awareness of these issues and maintain that CoPs is an appropriate theoretical lens for the purposes of our study for two reasons. First, the emerging nature of blog communities fits with the informal and non-canonical nature of CoPs (Wenger, 1998). Prior research has recognized the existence of blog communities among other types of blogs. Table 1 summarizes blog typologies in existing literature. Second, the body of knowledge of CoPs provides us with a detailed conceptual account of how communities learn, how the identities of their members are negotiated, and how new- comers become old-timers. As mentioned above, those are the phenomena that are the subject of our study. In this sense, we found that the literature of CoPs explains such phenomena as the result of the combination of four forces that are conceptualized as follows (Wenger, 1998): (a) identity, (b) knowledge sharing, (c) warrant mechanisms and (d) legitimate © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Information Systems Journal 19, 55–81 58 L Silva et al. Table 1. Blog typologies from existing literature Author/s Typology Description Blood (2000; Diaries, participatory media Blood traces the evolution of blogs from diary-like personal 2004) accounts to more interlinked, participatory media. Krishnamurthy Online diaries, support groups, Krishnamurthy classifies blogs based on their content in (2002) enhanced columns, and four quadrants along the axes of Personal vs.

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