Title: "Beyond Social Network Analysis: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to a Qualitative Study of Participation in Open Source Communities"

Speaker:

Nathalie Mitev was an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, Information Systems and Innovation Group, in the Department of Management for 17 years. She held prior academic positions at Salford University in Manchester and City University Business School in London. Her research focuses on the organisational aspects of information systems and technology, particularly from a sociological and political perspective. She has built a reputation for in- depth qualitative research, for setting a critical agenda and helping to bring this approach within mainstream information systems and organizations research. She has published critical work in management studies (in e.g., Journal of Management Studies, Management Learning, Personnel Review, Culture and Organisation) and information systems (European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, Information Technology and People, The Information Society, Information Technology for Development). She was track chair for ICIS in 2006 and co-chaired the IFIP8.2 conference in 2014. She co-edited 'Materiality and Space', ‘Materiality and Time’, and 'Materiality and Regulation' published in 2012-2015 by Palgrave Macmillan. They books based on an ongoing series of workshops on 'Organizations, Artefacts and Practices' she co-founded. She is Research Associated at Paris-Dauphine University and King’s College London, and visiting professor at the Institut d'Administration des Entreprises at Poitiers University and Grenoble University.

Abstract:

This paper focuses on research methods to investigate participants’ engagement with web 2.0 technologies and how they mediate socialization and collective knowledge production/learning. Our aim is to go beyond the structural underpinning of a social network analysis (SNA) and propose a cross-disciplinary approach that integrates SNA within a qualitative research strategy. This approach is based on three analytical dimensions that we deem necessary for the study of online participation: first, relations – that is the ensemble of interactions among participants; second, time – that is participants’ engagement period; and third, text – that is the quality of exchanges among participants. These three dimensions are captured through the combination of three methods: (1) a network visualization; (2) a longitudinal montage of text and networks; and (3) a qualitative content analysis of emails. We apply our approach to a case study of a global open source community in microfinance called Mifos. Based on the insights we have gained from this case study, we discuss theoretical and methodological implications and finally suggest an integrated methodological framework for the study of online participation and collaboration.