Exploring Collective Action Dynamics in Online Communities from a Critical Realist Perspective

Alessio Maria Braccini (), Tommaso Federici () and Øystein Sæbø ()
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Alessio Maria Braccini: Dipartimento di Economia e Impresa
Tommaso Federici: Dipartimento di Economia e Impresa
Øystein Sæbø: Department of Information Systems

A chapter in Blurring the Boundaries Through Digital Innovation, 2016, pp 271-282 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Scholars have been increasingly studying Online Communities (OCs) for a variety of purposes, focusing on issues like individual motivation, knowledge sharing, and governance structure. Few studies focused on the entanglement among technology, people, and organizational structures that support working dynamics within OCs. This paper addresses this issue by exploring causal mechanisms sustaining the collective actions of OCs through a retroduction process. Based on the study of the OC of an Italian political movement, the Five Star Movement, the concept of affordance is involved to describe the generative mechanisms and new affordances are identified on collective action within OCs. Our work contributes to a deeper understanding of the OCs phenomenon, explaining how the different components (people, technology, and organization) interact within a specific mechanism to achieve a specific result.

Keywords: Online communities; Affordances; Generative mechanisms; Critical realism; Five star movement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:lnichp:978-3-319-38974-5_21

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-38974-5_21

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