Wikipedia is a peer-produced online encyclopedia which uses the affordances of “wiki” technology to empower users to alter and revise the content of a webpage. Given Wikipedia’s prominence as a popular reference website, it is an obvious target for individuals to engage in information seeking and sensemaking following unexpected and highly salient events. Wikis appear to be well-suited to both supporting the temporary organizations which emerge to document breaking news events and have been cited as exemplars of timeliness, breadth, and reliability in the wake of events like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, and 2011 Arab Spring protests.
Understanding the dynamics of knowledge collaboration in socio-technical systems like wikis can potentially illuminate the features and processes which support knowledge work in other “networked organizations” characterized by teams with fluid membership and temporary roles, distributed but interrelated responsibilities, as well as work mediated through information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, little work has focused on the ability of socio-technical systems to organize in response to shocks and surprises. The coalescence of organizations following unexpected events vividly illustrates the origins and transformation of social structure. The mediation of these processes through computer databases logging fine-grained behavior opens the possibility of developing rich, post-hoc accounts of these dynamics.
This project employs a mixed methodological approach to unpack the processes occurring along multiple levels of analysis and intersecting several theoretical traditions. Network analysis methods are used to understand and compare the self-organized social structures which emerge from in both high tempo and steady state contexts. Ethnographic methods are used to analyze post-hoc digital trace data to highlight the role-making and role-playing dynamics employed by participants in high tempo, peer produced knowledge work.
This project confronts at least two challenges in researching socio-technical systems. First, it examines how the self-organization of online community members engaged in unexpected and time-sensitive knowledge work differs from steady-state knowledge work. The articles upon which our theoretical understanding of knowledge collaboration in online communities been established is disconnected from our knowledge about the roles and practices which support knowledge collaboration around the articles that are most prominently produced and consumed. The top 25 Wikipedia articles with the most contributors and page views in a given month consist nearly exclusively of articles pertinent to current events. Second, the project identifies the dynamics of participants’ role-making and role-playing which emerge during “high tempo” knowledge work with temporary and distributed teams collaborating over ICTs. The behavior of users engaging in information seeking and coauthorship around articles about these incidents operate under very different dynamics than those of other Wikipedia articles. Editors re-tailor expertise and repurpose resources, emphasize trust through action and negotiate roles in-situ, and rely on tacit knowledge and activity recorded encoded into artifacts rather than people.
The findings of this project have implications for communication studies, human-computer interaction, organization science, and journalism. The intellectual merits of this project include better understanding self-organization in online communities, synthesizing and testing the boundary conditions of extant theory about technology and organizing, and advancing a multi-level model of computer-mediated high-tempo teamwork. The broader impacts of this research include designing technologies to support knowledge work in contexts like national security, disaster response, political reform, and journalism as well as improving our understanding of technology and social behavior.