Dissertation Topic Bullets
Joseph M. Reagle
<email address>
-
One
of
the
major
topics
of
concern
to
scholars
of
communities
is
how
a
culture
emerges
within
the
context
of
the
media
environment
,
particularly
discursive
norms (Froomkin 2003).
-
In
recent
years
,
a
growing
body
of
literature
has
examined
the
phenomenon
of, t
ypically,
voluntary
and
open
communities (Reagl
e 2004) using
Internet
-
based
communication
to
produce
cultural
content
--
most
famously
open
/
free
software
,
but
also
including
prose,
audio
,
and
visual
works
.
-
Some
researchers
have
taken
an
economic
lens
and
asked
what motivates
such
pro
-
social
behavior
absent
immediate
monetary
rewards,
or
they
have
posited
new
models
of
organization (e.g.,
Benkler's "c
ommons
-
based
peer
-
production
" (2002)).
-
Others
are
adapting
sociological
and
psychological
models
of
group
dynamics
,
cognition
,
trust
,
and
decision
making
to
the
life
of
these
communities (Surowiecki 2004).
-
And
within
the
field
of
Computer
Mediated
Communications (
CMC)
authors are addressing
how
people's
sense
of
self
and
their
relations
to
other
and
the
media
evolve (Turkle 1995, Reinghold 2000 2003)
.
-
Yet, from my own experience in collaborating in the open source and standards communities, each of these approaches is relevant but incomplete.
As
yet
,
the
"meaning
,"
the
communal
inter
-subjectivity,
of
agreement
, disagreement an
d the nuanced states in between remains
largely
unexplored
. How do p
eople
make
sense
of
the
way
in
which
they
collaborate
?
In
"
Beyond
Majority
Rules
" Michael Sheeran (1996)
traces
the
historical
development
of
consensus
-
based
decision
making
of
the
Quakers
to
present-day
practice; most interestingly, he also explores
the
members'
perceptions of their interactions. For example, is a successful meeting a case of skilled facilitation,
or
the
discernment
of
the
will
of
God
?
-
I
propose
a
similar
project
on
the
Wikipedia
community
that
is
producing
a
free
on-line
encyclopedia
--
already
containing
over
a million
articles
! I plan to use and analyze the archives and contemporary discourse to answer the following question.
-
What is it about Wikipedia culture that permits it to produce
such
surprisingly
valuable
content
in
the
face
of
questions
about
authority, different points of view
, anonymity
,
decentralization
,
and
antisocial
behavior
?
Historically
,
how
did
this
culture
evolve
,
and
what
do
members
make
of
their
participation
in
productive, though sometimes contentious, interaction?
Cited Works
Benkler, Y. (2002). Coase's penguin, or, Linux and the nature of the firm. The Yale Law Jounal, 112(3):369-446.
Froomkin, M. (2003). Habermas@discourse.net: toward a critical theory of cyberspace. Harvard Law Review, 116(3).
Reagle, J. (2004). Open Content Communities. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7.
Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Rheingold, H. (2003). Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA.
Sheeran, M. (1996). Beyond majority rule: voteless decisions in the Religious Society of Friends. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,, Philadelphia, PA.
Surowieki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds. Doubleday, USA.
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen. Touchstone, New York, NY.