Suchergebnisse

-an analysis and documentation of the extremes of the communist regime of Albania -a political exploration into the dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class holds power in a post-Hoxha environment -a design implementation in which the bunkers are reclaimed from the charged symbolism of oppression and become agents towards a collective catharsis and healing

The paper explores the explanatory value of digital traces, especially for gaining insight to 'cultural' settings in the absence of cultural participants. We consider digital traces as the 'matter' of online social phenomena which can be revealed through transformation, re-alignment or re-configuration of data. In this vein, the notion of 'imbrication' is used to provide a conceptual lens for organizing inquiries in which digital traces should be re-arranged so as to act interdependently with other digital representations to provide posterior insights into designated virtual settlements. Empirical insight is sought by two case studies addressing different digital settings and different social accomplishments in the absence of 'cultural' participants.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to investigate boundary spanning tactics in a cross-organizational virtual alliance and discuss the analytical value of "digging" into technology for excavating boundaries and understanding their dynamic and emergent features.


Design/methodology/approach
– Although boundaries, their role and implications have been extensively investigated across a variety of online settings, the results are inconclusive as to the features of technology that create, dissolve or re-locate boundaries. This is attributed to the fact that in most cases technology is addressed as a black box – a discrete artefact of practice – without seeking justification for the inscribed functions that enable or constrain use. The paper overcomes these shortcomings by analysing digital trace data compiled through a virtual ethnographic assessment of a cross-organizational tourism alliance. Data comprise electronic traces of online collaboration whose interpretive capacity is augmented using knowledge visualization techniques capable of revealing dynamic and emergent features of boundary spanning.


Findings
– Boundary spanning in virtual settings entails micro-negotiations around several types of boundaries. Some of them are either enforced by or inscribed into technology, while others are enacted in practice. Knowledge visualization of digital trace data allows "excavation" of these boundaries, assessment of their implications on distributed organizing of online ensembles and discovery of "hidden" knowledge that drives boundary spanning tactics of collaborators.


Practical implications
– In cross-organizational collaborative settings, boundary spanning represents an enacted capability stemming from the intertwining between material and social/collective agencies. Consequently, boundaries surface as first class design constructs, directing design attention not only to features inscribed in technology (i.e. user profiles, registration mechanisms, moderation policies) but also the way such features are appropriated to re-shape, re-locate or dissolve boundaries.


Originality/value
– An empirical data pool compiled through virtual ethnographic assessment of online collaboration is revisited and augmented with knowledge visualization techniques that enhance the interpretive capacity of the data and reveal "hidden" aspects of the collaborators' boundary spanning behaviour and tactics.

Recent scholarship has demonstrated that virtual communities can be traced in the online 'tells' retained by popular virtual settlements like Facebook and Twitter. In this article, the authors push this line of research toward an analysis of pre-requisites and constrains of virtual settlements that determine the understanding of community life across settlements. The approach followed is grounded on a 'practice lens' that views virtual communities as enacted cyber-structures revealed through cultural artifacts facilitated by affordances inscribed into virtual settlements. The presence or absence of key affordances determines not only what is retained as online 'tells' in a virtual settlement but also the type and range of cultural artifacts, as well as how these artifacts are used across virtual settlements.

This article aims to develop a conceptual frame of reference for analyzing and gaining insight to virtual community practices. The author's normative perspective is that the vast majority of studies on virtual communities concentrate on managing (i.e., identifying, forming and sustaining) virtual communities, dismissing the practice the community is about. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that practice-oriented insights may offer new grounds for innovative engagement in virtual settings. Following a thorough analysis of seemingly heterogeneous concepts from new media, community-oriented thinking and practice-based approaches the article discusses what is it that differentiates offline from online practice, how these two are intertwined and why the literature lacks detailed insights on the actual practice virtual communities become engaged in. In light of this discussion, the Community-media-Practice grid is proposed as a guide for designing practiceoriented toolkits fostering a shared language for co-engagement in linguistic domains.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the collaborative practices of virtual teams carrying out knowledge‐based work and the tools required/used to assemble "collective" artefacts.Design/methodology/approachThe vast majority of recent work on communities of practice is devoted to community management (i.e. discovering, building, and maintaining communities), dismissing or undermining community practices and how they are technologically mediated (i.e. the practice‐specific tools and artefacts involved). This paper investigates existing practices and makes use of scenarios to envision new distributed collective practices in a designated application domain. The instruments used include both empirical tools (i.e. survey of current practice and expert interviews) and analytical tools (i.e. scenarios of use, walkthroughs, and virtual prototyping) to provide insight towards the design of practice‐oriented toolkits.FindingsThe proposed approach is validated in the context of an electronic village of local interest with a thematic focus on regional tourism, highlighting the key role of "collective" knowledge management in information‐based industries whose products are non‐material (intangible) and knowledge is central to gaining competitive advantage. The results include a general model for practice‐oriented toolkits conceived of as separate software components from (but interoperable to) the community support system and devised to establish a place for engaging in the practice the community is about. This model is then used to build an operational toolkit for assembling vacation packages by cross‐organization virtual communities of practice.Practical implicationsVirtual communities of practice (or partnerships) necessitate smooth integration of community management and practice‐specific tasks and tools. Community management tasks can be supported by augmenting capabilities of existing community portals to allow for community registration, role undertaking, declaration of virtual assets, etc. Practice‐oriented tasks should be designed in such a way so as to capture and accommodate domain‐specific vocabulary.Originality/valueModel‐based techniques and domain‐specific design languages are used as the unifying mechanism (i.e. software factory) for integrating community management and practice‐oriented artefacts. These techniques are designed and implemented into a software platform so as to facilitate the systematic accumulation and reuse of knowledge towards the construction of collective artefacts.