The paper explores the interrelation and differences between the concepts of occupational community, community of practice, online community and social network. It uses as a case study illustration the domain of UK university web site production and specifically a listserv for those involved in it. Different latent occupational communities are explored, and the potential for the listserv to help realize these as an active sense of community is considered. The listserv is not (for most participants) a tight knit community of practice, indeed it fails many criteria for an online community. It is perhaps best conceived as a loose knit network of practice, valued for information, implicit support and for the maintenance of weak ties. Through the analysis the case for using strict definitions of the theoretical concepts is made.
J.M. Muller and K. Carey, Design as a minority discipline in a software company: toward requirements for a community of practice, CHI Letters1(1) (2002) 383-90.
2.
J. van Maanen and S. Barley, Occupational communities: culture and control in organizations. In: B.M. Staw and L.L. Cummings (eds), Research in Organizational Behaviour (JAI Press , Greenwich, 1984) 314.
3.
G. Salaman, Community and Occupation, an Exploration of Work/Leisure Relationships (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge , 1974).
4.
J.W. Goode , Community within community: the professions , American Sociological Review22(2) (1957) 194-200.
5.
R. Murphy, Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolization and Exclusion ( Clarendon Press , Oxford, 1988) 8. [6] B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (2nd Edition) (Verso, London, 1991).
6.
V. Amit, Reconceptualizing community. In: V. Amit (ed.), Realizing Community (Routledge , London, 2002) 18.
7.
J.S. Brown and P. Duguid, Organizational learning and communities of practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation , Organization Science2(1) (1991) 40-57.
8.
J. Lave and E. Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation ( Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991).
9.
S. Gherardi , D. Nicolini and F. Odella, Toward a social understanding of how people learn in organizations, Management Learning29(3) ( 1998) 273-97.
10.
E. Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity ( Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998).
11.
A. Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988).
12.
M. Oliver, Community, identity and professionalisation: are learning technologists a community of practice? In: J. Cook and D. McConnell (eds), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference, Alt-C, Sheffield, 8-10 September 2003 (Association for Learning Technology, Sheffield, 2003) 259-72.
13.
E. Wenger, R. McDermott and W.M. Snyder, Cultivating Communities of Practice (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2002).
14.
A.M. Cox , What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works, Journal of Information Science31(6) ( 2005) 527-40.
15.
J.S. Brown and P. Duguid, Mysteries of the region: knowledge dynamics in Silicon Valley. In: C.M. Lee et al. (eds), The Silicon Valley Edge: A Habitat for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2000 ).
16.
J.S. Brown and P. Duguid, Knowledge and organization: a social practice perspective, Organization Science12(2) (2001) 198-213.
17.
J.S. Brown and P. Duguid, The Social Life of Information (2nd Edition) (Harvard Business School, Boston , 2002).
18.
M.M. Wasko and S. Faraj, It is what one does: why people participate and help others in electronic communities of practice, Journal of Strategic Information Systems9(2/3) (2000) 155-73.
19.
N. Kotamraju , Keeping up: web design skill and the reinvented worker, Information, Communication and Society5(1) (2002) 1-26.
20.
B. Wellman and M. Gulia, Virtual communities as communities: net surfers don't ride alone. In: M.A. Smith and P. Kollock (eds), Communities in Cyberspace ( Routledge, London, 1999).
21.
D. Bell, An Introduction to Cybercultures (Routledge, London, 2001).
S. Herring, Computer-mediated discourse analysis: an approach to researching online behaviour . In: S. Barab et al. (eds), Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning ( Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004).
24.
N.K. Baym, Tune in, Log on: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community ( Sage, London, 2000).
25.
R. Kling and C. Courtright, Group behavior and learning in electronic forums: a sociotechnical approach , The Information Society19(3) (2003) 221-35.
26.
B. Wellman, An electronic group is virtually a social network. In: S.E. Kiesler (ed.), Culture of the Internet ( Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, 1997).
27.
B. Wellman , A. Quan-Haase, J. Boase, W. Chen, K. Hampton, I.I. de Diaz and K. Miyata, The social affordances of the Internet for networked individualism, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication8(3) (2003). Available at: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html (accessed 28 August 2006).
28.
M. Castells , The Internet Galaxy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001).
29.
M.S. Granovetter , The strength of weak ties, American Journal of Sociology78(6) (1973) 1360-80.
30.
M.S. Granovetter , Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Harvard University Press, Cambridge , 1974).
31.
C. Haythornthwaite and B. Wellman, Work, friendship, and media use for information exchange in a networked organization, Journal of the American Society for Information Science49(12) (1998) 1101-14.
32.
Z. Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World ( Polity , Cambridge, 2001).
33.
A.M. Cox , The power and vulnerability of the `new professional': web management in UK universities, Program41(2) (2007) 148-69.
34.
R. Linford , From `one stop shop' to information hierarchy , Ariadne (20) ( 1999). Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue20/web-editor/ (accessed 28 August 2006).
35.
A.M. Cox , Beyond information: factors in participation in networks of practice, a case study of web management in UK higher education , Journal of Documentation (forthcoming).
36.
P.W. van der Walt and P.A. van Brakel, Task analysis of the webmaster: results of an empirical study, Aslib Proceedings52(1) (2000) 20-38.
37.
M.Q. Patton , Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (Sage, Thousand Oaks, 2002).
38.
G. McCracken , The Long Interview (Sage , London, 1988).
39.
J. Potter and M. Wetherell, Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour ( Sage, London, 1987).
40.
J. Okley, Thinking through fieldwork. In: A. Bryman and R.G. Burgess (eds), Analyzing Qualitative Data, (Routledge, London, 1994).
41.
P. Uimonen , Networks of global interaction, Cambridge Review of International Affairs16(2) (2003) 273-86.
42.
B.S. Butler , Membership size, communication activity, and sustainability: a resource-based model of online social structures, Information Systems Research12(4) (2001) 34-62.
43.
S. Rafaeli and F. Sudweeks, Interactivity on the Nets. In: F. Sudweeks et al. (eds), Network and Netplay: Virtual Groups on the Internet (MIT Press, London , 1998).
44.
B. Nonnecke and J. Preece, Silent participants: getting to know lurkers better. In: C. Lueg and D. Fisher (eds), From Usenet to CoWebs (Springer , London, 2003).
45.
B. Nonnecke , Lurking in Email-Based Discussion Lists (PhD thesis, South Bank University, 2000).
46.
G. Myers, Being a group: face and sociability in moderated discussions. In: S. Sarangi and M. Coulthard (eds), Discourse and Social Life ( Pearson Education, Harlow, 2000).
47.
A.C. Graesser , C.L. McMahen and B.K. Johnson, Question asking and answering. In: M.A. Gernsbacher (ed.), The Handbook of Psycholinguistics (Academic Press, New York, 1994).
48.
M.D. White , Questioning behavior on a consumer health electronic list. Library Quarterly70(3) (2000) 302-34.
49.
V.K. Bhatia , Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Based View (Continuum , London, 2004).
50.
J.S. Brown . and P. Duguid, Organizing knowledge, California Management Review40(1) (1998) 90-111.
51.
M. Hertzum , H.H.K. Andersen, V. Andersen and C.B. Hansen, Trust in information sources: seeking information from people, documents, and virtual agents, Interacting with Computers14(5) (2002) 575-99.
52.
M. Hertzum, People as carriers of experience and sources of commitment: information seeking in a software design project, New Review of Information Behaviour Research1(1) (2000) 135-49.
53.
J.N. Lasker , E.D. Sogolow and R.R. Sharim, The role of an online community for people with a rare disease: content analysis of messages posted on a primary biliary cirrhosis mailing list, Journal of Medical Internet Research7(1) ( 2005). Available at: http://www.jmir.org/2005/1/e10 (accessed 28 August 2006).
54.
E. Davenport and H. Hall, New knowledge and micro-level online organization: `communities of practice' as a development framework . In R. Sprague (ed.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (CD ROM) (IEEE, Los Alamitos, 2001).
55.
E. Raymond, The Jargon File (2003). Available at: http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/ (accessed 26 August 2006).
56.
P. Seebach, The Hacker FAQ (1999). Available at: www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker.html (accessed 28 August 2006).
57.
J. Webster, Women in IT professions: corporate structures, masculine cultures (Paper presented to the 3rd European Symposium on Gender and ICT, Manchester, 1 February 2005 ). Available at: http://ict.open.ac.uk/gender/papers/webster.doc (accessed 26 August 2006).
