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Structural Differentiation in Social Media

Adhocracy, Entropy, and the "1 % Effect"

verfasst von: Prof. Dr. Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buchreihe : Lecture Notes in Social Networks

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book explores community dynamics within social media. Using Wikipedia as an example, the volume explores communities that rely upon commons-based peer production. Fundamental theoretical principles spanning such domains as organizational configurations, leadership roles, and social evolutionary theory are developed. In the context of Wikipedia, these theories explain how a functional elite of highly productive editors has emerged and why they are responsible for a majority of the content. It explains how the elite shapes the project and how this group tends to become stable and increasingly influential over time. Wikipedia has developed a new and resilient social hierarchy, an adhocracy, which combines features of traditional and new, online, social organizations. The book presents a set of practical approaches for using these theories in real-world practice.

This work fundamentally changes the way we think about social media leadership and evolution, emphasizing the crucial contributions of leadership, of elite social roles, and of group global structure to the overall success and stability of large social media projects. Written in an accessible and direct style, the book will be of interest to academics as well as professionals with an interest in social media and commons-based peer production processes.

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction

Abstract

If Wikipedia was a country and words its income, the wildly uneven distribution of wealth among its contributor-citizens would be unheard of. The wealth distribution of the USA, for instance, which some see as quite unfair, pales by comparison, as the top 1% of American earners account for “only” 15% of the national income compared to the 77% of content “owned” by the top 1% of Wikipedians (see Fig. 1.1). Our book explains why and how this uneven distribution matters. We believe that, far from being an abnormality, this inequality is a sign that Wikipedia has developed organically and naturally. The imbalance, in fact, shows that the site is structurally differentiated and that functional leaders have emerged, both processes that are essential for a healthy, functioning project. In this respect, the proverbial top 1% of contributors have a positive effect, as they anchor and serve as a contributing elite group with an important role in shaping the project.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Structural Differentiation and Social Media: Theoretical Framework

Frontmatter

Chapter 2. Macro-Structural Perspectives on Social Differentiation and Organizational Evolution in Online Groups

Abstract

Although this volume is not intended to resolve the age-old philosophical argument about the uniqueness of human existence, it does stake out a perimeter in the debate about the nature of online sociability, which we see as a very specific phenomenon with particular characteristics. To accomplish this, we need to start with a few preliminary considerations about social behavior in general, as online sociability is a species of a given genus.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Chapter 3. Specifying a Wikipedia-Centric Explanatory Model for Online Group Evolution and Structural Differentiation

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we set up the broader sociological underpinnings of our argument. This chapter will focus on the more immediate and tangible mechanisms that shape the emergence and evolution of social media groups, such as those that build Wikipedia. Our theoretical argument will devote particular attention to the role played by contributing elites in organizing and sustaining collaborative activity.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Chapter 4. Social Structuration Online: Entropy and Social Systems

Abstract

One of the most important goals of the present volume is to define and relate group structuration to other online organizational and interactional phenomena. Although structuration is a high-level concept that may hold different meanings for different people, within this research, the concept is quite simple and clear. In brief, structuration is equated with the concept of “signal” in information systems, as defined by Shannon and Weaver (1948). Structuration is meaningful order, so by Shannon’s logic, structure is the opposite of entropy. Since structure is measured using entropy, we may say that structure increases as the observed value of entropy decreases. Conceptually, this means that structure is captured in the negative by observing the degree to which the system is not random (noisy or disordered).

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Chapter 5. Analytic Investigation of a Structural Differentiation Model for Social Media Production Groups

Abstract

In the previous chapters, we articulated the role of evolutionary processes on Wikipedia and similar social media production sites and then outlined the main reasoning behind using entropy as a measure of structuration. The main claim is that, just like many of self-organizing voluntary organizations, online social groups need to overcome the increasing costs of communication and coordination as they continue to grow and evolve, which they do via the emergence of leading contributors who work substantially more than their peers. In this chapter, we will look at the contours of leadership groups and at their temporal persistence, or stickiness, the latter of which we will assess via their turnover. We will further analyze the relationship between the evolution of group structuration (entropy) and elite stickiness in order to elucidate the role of elites in relation to the larger organization. Finally, we will examine the factors that explain how individuals advance to elite status, thereby adding a microlevel perspective to the meso- and macro-level dynamics under study.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Configurational Change Phases and Motors in Online Collaboration

Frontmatter

Chapter 6. The Foundations of a Theoretical Model for Organizational Configurations and Change in Online Collaborative Processes

Abstract

This chapter begins the process of intertwining the domains of organizational configurations and organizational change into a synthesized framework of configurational change motors. The goal is to articulate a comprehensive theoretical model that can bring the conversation about social structuration, covered in the previous chapters within a very broad and abstract terrain, to a more tangible and precisely specified reality. The first step is to identify specific types of system-level structuration, which in keeping with existing literature (e.g., Mintzberg 1979, 1989) we will call “organizational configurations.” Second, we will discuss the necessity and sufficiency of the configurations identified to date. Third, we will derive methods of translating the conceptual definitions of the configurations into specific operationalizable concepts. Fourth, we will lay the groundwork for the specific mechanisms by which configurations change and succeed each other over time (Van de Ven and Poole 1995), which will be further developed in Chap. 7.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Chapter 7. Organizational Configurations and Configurational Change

Abstract

This chapter explores the area of organizational configurations and links it with the evolutionary and revolutionary changes that we may observe in those configurations. We start by assessing the model laid out by Mintzberg (1979), significantly expanding on it by developing a comprehensive protocol to align any given organization with Mintzberg’s theoretical archetypes. This is then connected, on both a conceptual level and a measurement level, with the evolutionary and revolutionary changes that we may observe in those configurations, thereby yielding a new approach for researchers to directly observe and comprehend the development of organizational configurations over time. This is a vital piece of our larger theoretical model that specifies the mechanisms through which social structuration occurs in online collaborative groups.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Chapter 8. A Synthesized Theoretical Framework for Motors Driving Organizational Configurational Change

Abstract

Now that we have a framework for understanding organizational configurations and the manner in which they change over time, we need to unite this with the forces that drive those configurational changes. To that end, this chapter introduces the concept of organizational change motors, as articulated by Van de Ven and Poole (1995), and then serves to synthesize the two historically distinct domains of organizational configurations and organizational change motors into a unified theoretical framework, using the basic constructs of evolution and revolution as a conduit for this theoretical integration. This new synthesized framework offers a fundamentally enhanced approach to examine the long-term transformation of organizations and to understand the motors that form and reconstitute organizational configurations throughout their development.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Chapter 9. Wikipedia Evolution: Trends and Phases

Abstract

In the previous chapters, we presented a theoretical framework to explain the emergence and transformation of complex organizational configurations from an integrated perspective. We suggested that structural differentiation is an early and constitutive process by which online social organizations emerge, grow, and become stable. In this chapter, we explore some empirically measurable trends on Wikipedia that more concretely reveal structural differentiation through the lens of organizational configurations. We analyze data across the five dimensions of inbound and outbound degree centralization, betweenness centralization, assortativity, and entropy to track the ways in which Wikipedia has changed over time. We also propose a statistical method that may be used to determine the moments at which internal and external phenomena triggered revolutionary shifts in an organization’s development, and we subsequently use that method to identify transformative changes in the social structure of the online group that built Wikipedia.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Chapter 10. Breakpoints and Concurrent Factors

Abstract

Up to this point, we have articulated a synthesized model of organizational change, and we subsequently detailed some initial findings about the moments at which the organizational configuration of Wikipedia—or the manner in which that configuration was changing over time—shifted. In this chapter, we analyze the revisions made to key Wikipedia policy pages as well as contributions made to their associated “Talk” pages, in which editors discuss the revisions being made, in addition to larger societal events that may have affected Wikipedia. The findings of this archival search are used to assess the significant internal and external motors that acted upon the Wikipedia collaborative community to foster these configurational changes.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Future Theoretical and Practical Directions

Frontmatter

Chapter 11. Conclusions

Abstract

The core argument of this volume can be summarized as follows. The unequal distribution of effort found in social media projects is not a mere accident, but a fact of life. A group of very productive users dominates the collaborative process due to a natural trend toward social differentiation. Contribution patterns differentiate leaders from followers relatively early in the process, which offers a convenient and flexible (adhocratic) mechanism of coordination and control through a functional response: leading means achieving by doing the most. The metaphorical “1% effect” in the title of this volume makes a direct allusion to this process. In time, online collaborative projects set aside a selected group of individuals to “make a difference.” Their role is to differentiate the project from its competitors, while they, themselves, are differentiated as working leaders or, to apply a term used on several occasions in this volume, as functional leaders. Another way to understand the “1% effect” is by stating that the contribution leaders are “constitutive.” Their efforts generate the momentum needed for the growth of the project.

Sorin Adam Matei, Brian C. Britt

Backmatter

Titel: Structural Differentiation in Social Media
verfasst von: Prof. Dr. Sorin Adam Matei
Brian C. Britt
Copyright-Jahr: 2017
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-64425-7
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64424-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64425-7

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