Collaborations, Connections & Consequences: A study on the

effects of Pool and its community within the ABC

Jonathon HutchinsonPhD Final SeminarFebruary 1, 2013

3 Years in ABC Pool

• I have been embedded at the ABC for three years (2010)

• As an ethnographer and community manager of ABC Pool

• www.abc.net.au/pool

RQ1) How do the different interests of the stakeholders within an institutional online community intersect and how are those interests negotiated?

RQ2) What are the larger implications of institutional online communities?

Research Questions

Structure of Presentation

1. Gap in the literature

2. Methodology

3. ABC Pool story

4. Present my research findings

5. Discuss the implications of my findings

6. Conclusion and further research

1. Literature Gap

Community

• Social constructionist thinking: community symbolic structure compared with social practice

• Cultural sociology suggests common language, norms, beliefs, activities, reciprocity etc

• Common argument: barrier of inclusion/exclusion, community of practice/interest, goal based

Institution

• Post-industrial era requires the coordination of labour for goods and services - the role of the institution in solving group complexity

• Collection of individual skills to produce goods or services

• Challenges: top-down management, costly, exclusionary, class based

• Opportunities: stability, security, resources

Institutional Online Communities

• Institutional online communities are online communities operating within a public, commercial or non-commercial institutions and are not open or independently facilitated

• “Soft infrastructure” (Landry 2000) useful in describing the flow of ideas between institution and individuals

• Heterarchy vs. hierarchy

• ‘Clean’ professional voice vs. ‘messy’ user voice

• Social, technology and knowledge boundaries

Community Manager

• Inconclusive definitions - fluid and evolving

• Engage, encourage, facilitate (Bacon 2009)

• Representative for community to institution (Banks 2009)

• Responsible for increased affect of stakeholders (Bonniface 2006)

2. Methodology

Embedded Methodology

• My ethnographic action research within the ABC, Sydney and the ABC Pool online community provided the opportunity to employ the following research methods

• Methodological problem of how to observe and interact in the problem I am researching?

Participant Observation

• Rich ethnographic data enabled me to construct the ‘truth’ and understand the environment I was observing and interacting within

• “[R]epresent another culture, develop a particular line of analysis or construct a persuasive argument or engaging tale in the published account” (Emerson et al. 1995)

Grounded Theory

• Field diary of activities

• Coding process that builds on sensitising concepts with collected ethnographic data

• Provided four points of departure to further examine: interaction with the ABC, Community engagement, Community administration and project design

Surveys

• One survey conducted

• 36 respondents - marginal

• Confirmed my ethnographic observations

• Provided useful quotes

Focus Groups

• First focus group was a failure

• Second included ABC Pool staff and users from all over Australia (13 participants)

• Extremely important perspective from user base

Semi-structured Interviews

• ABC Pool staff, ABC staff, ‘Poolies’

• 15 interviews

• Useful for including other ABC voices in research

3. The ABC Pool Story

4. Research Findings

ABC Pool Practices

Communication - between all individuals

Creative Feedback - from users & ABC staff

Creative Collaboration - between all

Pool Participants

ABC Pool Team

ABC More Broadly

The Community Manager

• My experience suggests I was located somewhere amongst the stakeholders

• My position is demonstrated in the ABC Pool/Open public debate

• The following diagram ideally locates the community manager

The Community Manager

The Community Manager

The Community Manager

5. Discussion of Findings

The Cultural Intermediary

• Not Bourdieu (1984), Not Negus (2002)

• The cultural intermediary incorporates roles of the community manager

• The role is engaged across the ABC more broadly

• Often the role comes under a myriad of other monikers

The Cultural Intermediary

The Cultural Intermediary

The Cultural Intermediary

The Cultural Intermediary

However...

This model was idealistic and too simple for the entire ABC institution

The Cultural Intermediary

The Cultural Intermediary

The Cultural Intermediary

The Cultural Intermediary

Multiple Cultural Intermediaries

• Configuration is different dependent on activity

• Temporal progression for institutional online communities

• The temporality is true of ABC Pool

• Aligns with the literature of PSBs being “innovative, engaging, educational”

Institutional Online Community Governance

Models

• Three models

• Single point of contact

• Multiple cultural intermediaries

• Community Editors

6. Conclusion and Further Research

Conclusions

• The cultural intermediary builds on the community manager

• There can be multiple cultural intermediaries

• Three online governance models

• The approach toward online governance models by the ABC

• This research can be developed to investigate PSBs more broadly AND commercial environments

“To do” in Thesis

• Connect literature to findings and discussion

• Flesh out methodology

• Write the conclusion