The Individual within the Collective: Virtual Ideology and the Realization of Collective Principles

Fernback, Jan

doi:10.4135/9781446250303.n3

Cited by 56 publications

(45 citation statements)

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“…If this is so, and the very tagline of the project, "The free encyclopedia anyone can edit," points in this direction, then Wikipedia's core vision and its cognate technologies might reflect a broader contemporary yearning for individualization (Wellman 2001), for personal autonomy, and for giving voice to the voiceless (Matei 2005). Proliferation of individualism (Fernback 1997) can also produce an inflation of opinion, which, in turn, lead to conflict and ambiguity.…”

Section: Conflict and Ambiguity On Wikipedia: Theoretical Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Wikipedia's “Neutral Point of View”: Settling Conflict through Ambiguity

Matei

Dobrescu²

2011

The Information Society

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This article discusses how one of the most important Wikipedia policies, the "neutral point of view" (NPOV), is appropriated and interpreted by the participants in the Wikipedia project. By analyzing a set of constitutive documents for the Wikipedian universe, including discussion about NPOV, the authors conclude that ambiguity is at the heart of the policy process on Wikipedia. The overarching conclusion is that ambiguity on Wikipedia is not extraneous, but a central ingredient of this wiki project's policymaking. Ambiguity naturally develops from the pluralist and nonhierarchic values of the culture that brought Wikipedia to life, and this conclusion requires that we reconsider the nature of "neutrality" practiced on Wikipedia.

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Section: Conflict and Ambiguity On Wikipedia: Theoretical Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Wikipedia's “Neutral Point of View”: Settling Conflict through Ambiguity

Matei

Dobrescu²

2011

The Information Society

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“…There has been much discussion of virtual communities where the members never meet (Castells, 1996;Fernback, 1997;Poltrock and Engelbeck, 1997). Conkar et al (1999) have discussed a multi-user dungeon (MUD) and referred to their members as a CoP.…”

Section: Can a Cop Be Virtual?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Communities of practice in the distributed international environment

Hildreth

Kimble²,

Wright³

2000

Journal of Knowledge Management

228

144

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Modern commercial organisations are facing pressures which have caused them to lose personnel. When they lose people, they also lose their knowledge. Organisations also have to cope with the internationalisation of business forcing collaboration and knowledge sharing across time and distance. Knowledge management (KM) claims to tackle these issues. This paper looks at an area where KM does not offer sufficient support, that is, the sharing of knowledge that is not easy to articulate. The focus in this paper is on communities of practice in commercial organisations. We do this by exploring knowledge sharing in Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of communities of practice and investigating how communities of practice may translate to a distributed international environment. The paper reports on two case studies that explore the functioning of communities of practice across international boundaries. The authorsPaul Hildreth is a Research Student, and Chris Kimble and Peter Wright are both Lecturers all at the Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK. Keywords Communities of practice, Case studies AbstractModern commercial organisations are facing pressures which have caused them to lose personnel. When they lose people, they also lose their knowledge. Organisations also have to cope with the internationalisation of business forcing collaboration and knowledge sharing across time and distance. Knowledge management (KM) claims to tackle these issues. This paper looks at an area where KM does not offer sufficient support, that is, the sharing of knowledge that is not easy to articulate. The focus in this paper is on communities of practice in commercial organisations. We do this by exploring knowledge sharing in Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of communities of practice and investigating how communities of practice may translate to a distributed international environment. The paper reports on two case studies that explore the functioning of communities of practice across international boundaries. Electronic accessThe current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

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“…Baym 1995Baym , 1997Hill and Hughes 1998;Watson 1997;Whelan 2004;Lee and Peterson 2004). Leaving aside subtle differences of emphasis and definition, the presence of substantive characteristics such as these often has featured among convincing justifications for use of the notion of community as a means to describe such groups, something which has served to distinguish them from more sporadic, superficial or individualised forms of online interaction (Rheingold 1993;Baym 1995Baym , 1997Fernback 1997Fernback , 1999Watson 1997). 4 Such have been the levels of attachment and commitment in many cases that, as well as exercising communal responsibility in the content of their own posting, participants often have involved themselves in the collective maintenance and enforcement of acceptable behaviour from others (McLaughlin et al 1995;Watson 1997;Smith 1999;Lee and Peterson 2004).…”

Section: Online Individualisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactive online journals and individualization

Hodkinson

2007

New Media & Society

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The final version of the paper can be found here. IMPORTANT: Relevance to debates on contemporary social networking sites?Readers should note that although it focuses upon LiveJournal as a form of 'social software', as distinct from 'serious' forms of blogging, the paper was written and accepted prior to much of the explosion in popularity of what are now known as 'social networking sites' (SNS) and well before the development of a discrete literature on the use of such sites. In today's terms, LiveJournal often is seen as one of the pioneers of familiar SNS features such as personal profile pages, friends networks, interactive comments and privacy settings. In spite of inevitable differences from one year to the next and one site to the next, I regard many of the findings and conclusions of this paper as highly relevant to developing understandings of the current use by young people of newer SNS such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. I hope that readers will agree.Brief references to more recent social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, as well as updates on figures were included as part of minor amendments made to the paper prior to its final publication in 2007.Thank you for your interest and I hope you enjoy the paper. AbstractSuggestions that the internet has facilitated existing trends towards the increasing disconnection of individuals from substantive communities have been balanced by a variety of empirical case-studies demonstrating evidence of significant communal features on some online discussion forums. While recognising the role of discussion forums in facilitating community, this paper seeks to shift the focus of debate towards the rapidly increasing use of online journal style web logs as a form of social interaction. Ostensibly centred upon the individual rather than the group, yet increasingly interactive and socially oriented, interactive online journals appear particularly consistent with the notion of individualistic, rather than group-centred patterns of sociability. The paper explores this possibility in relation to case study research focused on the recent take-up of online journals by a group of individuals who previously participated in discussion forums associated with a music and fashion subculture known as the goth scene.

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The Individual within the Collective: Virtual Ideology and the Realization of Collective Principles

Cited by 56 publications

References 0 publications

Wikipedia's “Neutral Point of View”: Settling Conflict through Ambiguity

Wikipedia's “Neutral Point of View”: Settling Conflict through Ambiguity

Communities of practice in the distributed international environment

Interactive online journals and individualization

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