Orchestrating knowledge development in an online community across social media platforms

This thesis examines how knowledge development occurs in an online community (OC) that is distributed across multiple social media platforms. Through an in-depth online ethnography, coupled with interviews, the data is conducted on a media firm in Saudi Arabia that proposed creative ways of challenging some social phenomena to encourage change such as the male guardianship law (MGL) and preserving heritage sites from neglect by using multiple platforms accordingly to harness new content for innovative media products. The findings illustrate that OC applied orchestration practices such as profiling platforms, profiling users and then configuring the knowledge development process across multiple platforms accordingly. The analysis showed that the orchestration is establishing the discussion on Twitter to build a collective momentum then shifted to collective ideation using Facebook and Instagram so that a different segment of the OC would engage in more profound knowledge development. The thesis contributions are in twofold. Firstly, the thesis provides empirical evidence of the fluidity of OC across platforms, by showing that OC orchestration, in contrast to other forms of organising, enables fluid boundaries across multiple layers of actors and activities in the OC. This allows a unique set of users to engage in a collective goal for knowledge development to increase the quality of the contribution. Secondly, the thesis demonstrates that knowledge development is applied through the enactment of different types of negotiated dynamics (tension and co-creation) between users and OC moderators in every platform which results on different yet interdependent knowledge that contributes to the innovative outcome. The thesis concludes by discussing the limitations and implications of the contributions for further research