A structuration approach to online communities of practice: The case of Q&A communities

  • Authors:

  • Howard Rosenbaum;Pnina Shachaf

  • Affiliations:

  • Indiana University Bloomington, 1320 E 10th St. LI 001, Bloomington, IN;Indiana University Bloomington, 1320 E 10th St. LI 005A, Bloomington, IN

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

This article describes an approach based on structuration theory (Giddens, [1979] [1984]; Orlikowski, [1992] [2000]) and communities of practice (Wenger, [1998]) that can be used to guide investigation into the dynamics of online question and answer (Q&A) communities. This approach is useful because most research on Q&A sites has focused attention on information retrieval, information-seeking behavior, and information intermediation and has assumed uncritically that the online Q&A community plays an important role in these domains of study. Assuming instead that research on online communities should take into account social, technical, and contextual factors (Kling, Rosenbaum, & Sawyer, [2005]), the utility of this approach is demonstrated with an analysis of three online Q&A communities seen as communities of practice. This article makes a theoretical contribution to the study of online Q&A communities and, more generally, to the domain of social reference. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.