Toward an Infrastructural Approach to Understanding Participation in Virtual Communities

This chapter outlines an infrastructural approach to understanding virtual communities (VCs) and applies it to a novel set of VCs. The infrastructural approach explicitly links logics embodied in technical, social, and information systems to opportunities and motives for participation. This chapter first outlines how the infrastructure approach is synthesised from current approaches to understanding VCs. Second, it uses the infrastructural approach to analyse three related meatspace communities' progress toward collaborating through specific data-sharing VCs. Third, it highlights merits and shortcomings of the infrastructural approach to understanding participation in virtual communities. Finally, it offers potential avenues of further VC research using the infrastructural approach.