The Many-Faced User: A Review of Engagement and Participant Styles

Throughout my learning, I have been introduced to various users and participation practices within networks and communities. As I just just completed a knowledge sharing and tracking experience, I think it's important to be aware of the types of users that exist and also to reflect on the various user types to improve my awareness of my own engagement and participation practices and patterns. 

Communities: 

• Lurker- reading posts regularly, but never posting or having an active presence in the community. Lurking is a passive role, where the user does not engage with members or like their posts or comments. 
• Active Contributor- a user that posts, comments, asks questions regularly and actively contributes to the content and discussions with other community members. 

Knowledge Practices: 

• Expertise locating- users "search for and retrieve codified knowledge without having to contact the person who originally developed it" Expertise locating involves knowledge reuse 
• Expert locating- "an informal and largely social process through which workers seek advice and input from other people" 
• Reaching out- "knowledge seekers' immediate social contacts (strong ties) possess the required knowledge" 
• Socializing- involve three types of activities: generating new ties, solidifying social ties and community building 
• Horizon broadening- "reflects a personal desire to learn about things beyond the immediate demands of work-at-hand" 

-Jarrahi and Sawyer, 2013, p. 117-126

Networked Knowledge Activities 

Knowledge Management: 

• Collect- “to save a copy of or link to an item so it can be found or retrieved at a later time”
• Curate- “creating organized, annotated collections of online artifacts. More purposeful and selective than collecting, and often follows the collection process” 

Knowledge Communication:

• Share- “to take something that has been collected, curated or constructed and make it available online” 
• Broker- "the act of connecting online and offline groups or networks via knowledge transmission" 
• Negotiate- "a collaborative, discursive process in which learners work together to agree upon meaning"

Knowledge Creation:

• Construct- "the act of making something new or combining existing existing things in a new manner"

-Dennen et al., 2020, p. 166

Professional Learning Practices on Social Media 

Info-consumers- "seek to find and take away new knowledge or ideas and resources from social mediated spaces" 

Info-networker- "the major difference between Info-consumer and Info-networker is that the latter seeks to find and take away new ideas and resources from social mediated spaces for the purpose of sharing with other colleagues"  

Self-seeking contributor- "the self-seeking contributor posts their knowledge, ideas and or curriculum materials to their professional learning network for self-determining reasons"

 Vocationalist- "the vocationalist engages in social media as a professional learning process to build the profession"

-Prestridge, 2019, p. 151-153

I have always labeled myself as a passive participant, a lurker (seems like such a dark term, like someone who hides in the dark corners of the web, lurking on posts and social media sites). However, I believe engagement is much more complicated than I initially thought. User roles are complicated and roles and engagement practices change depending on different purposes and social media tools. 

I believe my lurker role has changed and my engagement practices are being influenced by my learning so far. Perhaps I am emerging from the shadows? Am I scared? A little! but excited too!

via GIPHY

What user do you fall under? Do you participate in more than one engagement type? Has your user role changed? 

via GIPHY

References 

Dennen, V. P., Word, K., Adolfson, D., Arechavaleta, V., He, D., Hsu, C.-W., Hur, J., Jung, D., Kent, H., Russell, A., & Toth, K. (2020). Using the networked knowledge activities framework to examine learning on social networking sites. In P. Kommers & G. C. Peng (Eds.), Proceedings of the international conference on Web-based Communities and Social Media 2020 (pp. 165-172). IADIS Press. 

Jarrahi, M. H., & Sawyer, S. (2013). Social technologies, informal knowledge practices, and the enterprise. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 23(1-2), 110-137. doi:10.1080/10919392.2013.748613

Prestridge, S. (2019). Categorising teachers’ use of social media for their professional learning: A self-generating professional learning paradigmLinks to an external site.. Computers & Education, 129, 143-158. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.11.003 info-consumer