Study of the dynamics of network communities’ subjectness by its manifestation in discourse

Abstract

In this paper we investigated subjectness – one of the fundamental properties of online communities. The term defines group’s capacity for self-organization and joint activity. The community’s subjectness emerges in its discourse and depends on how the discourse is organized and developed: communicational processes, goal setting, conventions both declared and implicit, etc. We hypothesized that subjectness of the online community is changing during its functioning. This change can be estimated by presence of subjectness' components in the discourse.
The study material comprised 15 threads taken from 5 online communities (three threads per community). The subjectness was estimated based on 64 discursive indicators related to 9 components of the subjectness.
Different components of the subjectness were found to be associated with different stages of the communities’ lifetime. A subjectness component related to organization within the community was found to be the most susceptible to change. Positive communication within the community, maintenance of the community’s image and boundaries were also sensitive to change. The dynamics of the subjectness was often associated with solving offline problems by the community members.