I am presenting on 17th December a paper on the International Conference of Information Systems, ICIS 2009, in Phoenix, Arizona. My paper ‘Virtual communities and democratic debates: A case study on institutional influences’ discuss how institutions such as governments and universities may affect the freedom of opinion in online spaces of debates. The article challenges the idea that virtual communities are necessarily spaces for democratic debates, showing that in practice people may fear to expose their ideas in such a collective environment, especially when they believe powerful social actors could use mechanisms of punishment in online and offline environments against those that disagree with their ideas.
The paper analyses empirical data to show in which way non-democratic social structures emerge, and discuss the role of technology in this process. It is not a surprise that powerful actors choose channels of communication that enable them to keep a level of control over the expressions of community members. Indeed, members most of time may express their ideas, but they also may be excluded from the community if these ideas are too challenging to the mainstream leaders of the communities.
An important lesson from this research is the role of technology: discussion lists permit their owners (creators of lists) to have more power than other members, thus enabling forms of exclusion that would not be possible if the very same tools empowered the whole community rather than a few moderators. In spite of recognizing the role of technology, I also argue in the paper that way people behave is not molded by technology. Discussion lists enable a particular form of governance, but people could have appropriate technology in a different ways. Thus the paper shows how institutions, technology and social actors interact to permit the emergence of particular governance structures in virtual communities.
The paper offers many lessons, that are useful for researchers and practitioners who are interested in governance structures in virtual environments. Although I have researched voluntary communities, certainly the observed factors are also important in non-voluntary groups. More organizations are using virtual teams as a way of fostering collaboration, and many companies are building virtual communities using social media for marketing their products. These environments are subject to the influence of institutions in society, and the organizations themselves have institutionalised structures which affect the forms of governance and interaction in these online environments.
This is not to say that we cannot have surprises. Naturally social actors, or users, or customers, or audiences, or citizens – different disciplines call these virtual groups differently –, may decide to act in ways that have not been planned by organizations. However, it is a matter of fact that organizations keep the control of their virtual channels, in the limit defining the content that is acceptable. In a broader level, there are other public domains for conversations, through the many social media channels that are open to the contribution of all without censorship, in which companies cannot control the content. This is the most interesting field of interaction, in which the battles for hearts and minds cannot count on the control of technology but on good arguments and quick capacity of interacting with the people.
Reference:
Hercheui, M.D. (2009). Virtual Communities and Democratic Debates: A Case Study on Institutional Influences. Proceedings 30th International Conference of Information Systems (ICIS), Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 14th-18th December 2009.
