This presentation is for my PhD final seminar and was presented to several internal QUT examiners. The audio includes the following Q&A.

1. Collaborations, Connections
& Consequences: A study on
the effects of Pool and its
community within the ABC
Jonathon Hutchinson
PhD Final Seminar
February 1, 2013

2. 3 Years in ABC
Pool
• I have been embedded at the ABC for three
years (2010)
• As an ethnographer and community manager
of ABC Pool
• www.abc.net.au/pool

3. Research
Questions
RQ1) How do the different interests of the
stakeholders within an institutional online
community intersect and how are those interests
negotiated?
RQ2) What are the larger implications of
institutional online communities?

4. Structure of
Presentation
1. Gap in the literature
2. Methodology
3. ABC Pool story
4. Present my research findings
5. Discuss the implications of my findings
6. Conclusion and further research

5. 1. Literature Gap

6. Community
• Social constructionist thinking: community
symbolic structure compared with social
practice
• Cultural sociology suggests common
language, norms, beliefs, activities, reciprocity
etc
• Common argument: barrier of
inclusion/exclusion, community of
practice/interest, goal based

7. Institution
• Post-industrial era requires the coordination of
labour for goods and services - the role of the
institution in solving group complexity
• Collection of individual skills to produce goods
or services
• Challenges: top-down management, costly,
exclusionary, class based
• Opportunities: stability, security, resources

8. Institutional
Online
•
Communities
Institutional online communities are online communities
operating within a public, commercial or non-commercial
institutions and are not open or independently facilitated
• “Soft infrastructure” (Landry 2000) useful in describing
the flow of ideas between institution and individuals
• Heterarchy vs. hierarchy
• ‘Clean’ professional voice vs. ‘messy’ user voice
• Social, technology and knowledge boundaries

9. Community
Manager
• Inconclusive definitions - fluid and evolving
• Engage, encourage, facilitate (Bacon 2009)
• Representative for community to institution
(Banks 2009)
• Responsible for increased affect of
stakeholders (Bonniface 2006)

10. 2. Methodology

11. Embedded
Methodology
• My ethnographic action research within the
ABC, Sydney and the ABC Pool online
community provided the opportunity to employ
the following research methods
• Methodological problem of how to observe and
interact in the problem I am researching?

12. Participant
Observation
• Rich ethnographic data enabled me to construct
the ‘truth’ and understand the environment I was
observing and interacting within
• “[R]epresent another culture, develop a
particular line of analysis or construct a
persuasive argument or engaging tale in the
published account” (Emerson et al. 1995)

13. Grounded Theory
• Field diary of activities
• Coding process that builds on sensitising
concepts with collected ethnographic data
• Provided four points of departure to further
examine: interaction with the ABC, Community
engagement, Community administration and
project design

14. Surveys
• One survey conducted
• 36 respondents - marginal
• Confirmed my ethnographic observations
• Provided useful quotes

15. Focus Groups
• First focus group was a failure
• Second included ABC Pool staff and users
from all over Australia (13 participants)
• Extremely important perspective from user
base

16. Semi-structured
Interviews
• ABC Pool staff, ABC staff, ‘Poolies’
• 15 interviews
• Useful for including other ABC voices in
research

17. 3. The ABC Pool
Story

25. 4. Research
Findings

26. ABC Pool
Practices
Communication - between all individuals
Creative Feedback - from users & ABC staff
Creative Collaboration - between all

27. Pool Participants

28. ABC Pool Team

29. ABC More Broadly

30. The Community
Manager
• My experience suggests I was located
somewhere amongst the stakeholders
• My position is demonstrated in the ABC
Pool/Open public debate
• The following diagram ideally locates the
community manager

31. The Community
Manager

32. The Community
Manager

33. The Community
Manager

34. 5. Discussion of
Findings

35. The Cultural
Intermediary
• Not Bourdieu (1984), Not Negus (2002)
• The cultural intermediary incorporates roles of
the community manager
• The role is engaged across the ABC more
broadly
• Often the role comes under a myriad of other
monikers

36. The Cultural
Intermediary

37. The Cultural
Intermediary

38. The Cultural
Intermediary

39. The Cultural
Intermediary

40. However...
This model was idealistic and too simple for the
entire ABC institution

41. The Cultural
Intermediary

42. The Cultural
Intermediary

43. The Cultural
Intermediary

44. The Cultural
Intermediary

45. Multiple Cultural
Intermediaries
• Configuration is different dependent on activity
• Temporal progression for institutional online
communities
• The temporality is true of ABC Pool
• Aligns with the literature of PSBs being
“innovative, engaging, educational”

46. Institutional Online
Community Governance
Models
• Three models
• Single point of contact
• Multiple cultural intermediaries
• Community Editors

48. 6. Conclusion and
Further Research

49. Conclusions
• The cultural intermediary builds on the community
manager
• There can be multiple cultural intermediaries
• Three online governance models
• The approach toward online governance models by
the ABC
• This research can be developed to investigate PSBs
more broadly AND commercial environments

50. “To do” in Thesis
• Connect literature to findings and discussion
• Flesh out methodology
• Write the conclusion