The role of Normative Self Regulation of Global Network Institutions: The Case of Wikipedia

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a case study into the self-regulative mechanisms of the Wikipedia. It examines the means by which a volunteer community of heterogeneous actors self-organise and self-regulate to give rise to and maintain a global network institution. Theoretically, the study is concerned with the reciprocal interplay between macro and micro phenomena. More specifically it examines how macro level „normative‟ structure emerges from the micro interaction of agents and fold-back to influence agent behaviour as revealed through the only coordination mechanism available to them - that of linguistic utterance. A detailed analysis of illocutionary speech acts is undertaken on Wikipedia articles labelled as controversial. This analysis is used to identify the self-organisational and self-regulatory mechanisms at work. Practically, the findings have relevance to the study of computer mediated communication and the interplay between technology, social artefacts and individual agency, particularly in the context of „open source‟ global networks. The findings are relevant, therefore, to understanding network organizations (Miles & Snow, 1978; Miles et al., 1997), network governance (Jones et al., 1997) and the so called „Bazaar Governance‟ of open source (Bonaccorsi & Rossi, August, 2003; Christley et al., 2004; Lattemann & Stieglitz, 2005; Raymond, 2001). This paper forms a part of a three year EU research project titled „emergence in the Loop‟ (EMIL).

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