Is Lurking "Legitimate Peripheral Participation?"
Is reading a form of participation? Is lurking simply taking advantage of a group or are the benefits accrued through reading and observation legitimate? I think they certainly can be. I have been enjoying the discussion about this on the ComPrac Yahoogroup and have found my beliefs and experiences resonating with the message from David Gibbons. com-prac : Message: RE: [cp] Re: Legitimate peripheral participation and lurkers
The full thread starts here.Tags:
posted by Nancy White at 5:28 PM
3 Comments:
John Seely Brown once mentioned that lurking is a form of cognitive apprenticeship. Trish Milne and I found that of the 20% of people who responded to a survey of ActKM members, 78% never or rarely posted. At the same time these lurkers reported getting significant value from their membership.
Milne & Callahan (2006) 'ActKM: the story of a community', Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 108-118.
I posted the first question (and forgot to put my name :)).. I'm still curious how it works really. I've also found people who sign up to 100 lists, just to fish links, using it more for 'infomediary purposes', the way I use delicious, clicking through.
I'm not sure in how far that kind of lurking relates to participation/maybe a different form of participation as the regular apprentice?
The thread on comprac continues to be very interesting. The conclusion I am drawing is that these labels are only useful in context if we want them to define a boundary. In theory, they are handles with which we can talk about participation.
If I learn from reading and it changes my practice, that counts as participation in a community of practice for me. Now it may not be within the norms of that community if it has expectations of quid pro quo. But in reality, that is rare.
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