Organizing and Governance in Online Communities (UW COM597 Winter 2025)

From CommunityData
Most weeks on the #Schedule have more readings listed than I plan to assign, and many will be made "optional" as the schedule shapes up. I've erred on the side of including more reading options to convey a sense of the material I am choosing from. The expected reading load is detailed in the #Workload section of this page.
COM597B: Special Topics in Communication: Organizing and Governance in Online Communities — Department of Communication
Instructor:
Course Meetings: 1:30–5:20p, Friday, in CMU 242
Course Websites:
Zoom Link: Available in Canvas

Overview and Learning Objectives[edit]

The internet and other new communication technologies have led to new forms of organizations, groups, and communities. Online organizations shape communication, work, play, learning, socialization, and more. They also raise new challenges, threaten our well-being, and undermine critical social institutions and the integrity of public discourse. How should scholars best understand online organizations? How should these types of groups be managed and governed?

Although there is a wealth of research in organizational studies in the social and behavioral sciences and management, applying this research can be challenging because online organizing looks different from "traditional" and more widely studied forms of organizations. For example, a Q&A forum, a wiki, or an open source software project share many features with clubs, voluntary organizations, social movements, and firms, but they are also different in many ways.

This class will draw from classic texts in organizing and governance from sociology, communication, economics, political science, and beyond. It will try to complement these "classic" texts with more contemporary work that attempts to extend or build on this work in online groups, social media, or other settings mediated by new communication technologies. The course will be seminar-based, and our time together each week will be spent talking through and building an understanding of the classic texts and thinking through how these older theories apply to new communication environments and the new types of organizations that inhabit them.

I will consider the course a complete success if every student can do all of these things at the end of the quarter:

  • Identify and speak fluently about a range of central concepts, theories, and classic texts from the study of organization theory and governance.
  • Fluently and critically reflect on challenges and opportunities related to using and applying these concepts, theories, and texts in scholarly research projects related to understanding online communities.
  • Demonstrate an ability to speak synthetically about the course material, especially with your research interests, settings, and challenges.
  • Apply the course material in the context of a specific research project of interest to you.
  • Compellingly present your ideas and reflections on the course material in writing and orally.

Note About This Syllabus[edit]

Changes to the Syllabus[edit]

You should expect this syllabus to be a dynamic document, not a contract. Although the core expectations for this class are fixed, the details of readings and assignments will shift based on how the class goes, any guest speakers I arrange, my readings in this area, etc. As a result, there are three important things to keep in mind:

  • Although details on this syllabus will change, I will try to ensure that I never change readings more than six days before they are due. This means that if I don't fill in a reading marked "[To Be Decided]" six days before it's due, it is dropped. If I don't change something marked "[Tentative]" before the deadline, then it is assigned. This also means that if you plan to read more than six days ahead, contact me first.
  • Because this syllabus is a wiki, you can track every change by clicking the history button on this page when I make changes. I will summarize these changes in the weekly announcement on Canvas that will be emailed to everybody in the class. Closely monitor your email or the announcements section on the course website on Canvas to ensure you don't miss these announcements.

Access to the Readings[edit]

Because I understand and remember the financial challenges of being a student, I've structured this course so there is no textbook for this class. There is nothing you will need to purchase. Everything we'll read in this class will either be freely available online, through UW libraries, or via Canvas.

Many readings are marked as "[Available through UW libraries]". Most of these will be accessible to anybody who connects from the UW network. This means that if you're on campus, it will likely work. Although you can go through the UW libraries website to get most of these, the easiest way is using the UW library proxy bookmarklet. This is a little button you can drag and drop onto the bookmarks toolbar on your browser. When you press the button, it will ask you to log in using your UW NetID and then will automatically send your traffic through UW libraries. You can also use the other tools on this UW libraries webpage.

Workload[edit]

This class is a 5 credit class. According to the UW policy, students should expect to devote about 3 hours per week per credit—on average across weeks and students. With this in mind, I plan to assign about a book worth of reading each week. Because we will spend 3-4 hours in class and an hour or two on assignments, on average, I expect everybody to read for about 8-10 hours each week (i.e., about one book's worth of reading time). For some people, reading a book's worth of articles will take longer. For some, it will take less.

I understand this class involves a lot of reading compared to some other courses, especially outside of the social sciences. Historically, students suggest my courses take more time than most classes at UW but less time per week (on average) than 3 hours per credit. Please let me know if you are spending more than 15 hours a week on the class.

Schedule[edit]

Friday January 10: Introduction[edit]

Assignments
Required readings

This pair of two articles on peer production:

These articles on "community" and it's relationships to organizations, especially in online spaces:

Optional reading
  • Oldenburg, Ray. 1989. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day. First Edition. New York: Paragon House. [Chapter 1 ("The Problem of Place in America") and Chapter 2 ("The Character of Third Places")] [Available in Canvas]

Friday January 17: Introduction: Agency, Structure, and Governance[edit]

Assignments
Required readings

The argument over the primacy of agency and structure in shaping society is probably the most important animating debate in both the classical and contemporary social sciences and has important connections to thinking about governance. We'll read classic texts from both perspectives as well a series of more recent texts that have extended these ideas into thinking about governance in online communities.

Here are two pieces about rational choice (a position strongly associated with a focus on individual agency):

Here is a set of pieces about social structure, authority, and governance (especially bureaucracy):

Optional readings
  • Weber, Max. 2019. Economy and Society: A New Translation. Translated by Keith Tribe. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. [The remainder of Chas. 1 and 3 plus very short "Overviews" notes to the chapters (pgs. 74-138, 335-449)] [Available in Canvas]
  • Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1959. “Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production: A Comparative Study.” Administrative Science Quarterly 4 (2): 168–87. https://doi.org/10.2307/2390676. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Weber, Max. 1978. “Chapter IX: Bureaucracy.” In Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 956–1005. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. [Available in Canvas]

Friday January 24: Collective Action [Tentative][edit]

Optional:

  • Bimber, Bruce A., Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl. 2012. Collective Action in Organizations: Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change. Communication, Society and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Friday January 31: Institutionalism [Tentative][edit]

  • DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. 1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Review 48 (2): 147–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095101. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. 1977. “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.” American Journal of Sociology 83 (2): 340–63. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Powell, Walter W., and Paul J. DiMaggio. 2012. “Introduction.” In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. University of Chicago Press. [Forthcoming]
  • Weick, Karl E. 1976. “Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems.” Administrative Science Quarterly 21 (1): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/2391875. [Available from UW libraries]

Optional:

  • Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1997. “On the Virtues of the Old Institutionalism.” Annual Review of Sociology 23 (Volume 23, 1997): 1–18. [Available from UW libraries].

Friday February 7: Organizational Ecology [Tentative][edit]


Optional:

Friday February 14: Learning and Sensemaking [Tentative][edit]

  • Weick, Karl E. 1993. “The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster.” Administrative Science Quarterly 38 (4): 628–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393339. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Weick, Karl E., Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, and David Obstfeld. 2005. “Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking.” Organization Science 16 (4): 409–21. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0133. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Mamykina, Lena, Drashko Nakikj, and Noemie Elhadad. 2015. “Collective Sensemaking in Online Health Forums.” In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15), 3217–26. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702566. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Krafft, Peter, Kaitlyn Zhou, Isabelle Edwards, Kate Starbird, and Emma S. Spiro. 2017. “Centralized, Parallel, and Distributed Information Processing during Collective Sensemaking.” In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17), 2976–87. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3026012.

Optional:

  • Weick, Karl E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. 1st ed. Sage Publications, Inc. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
  • Russo, Renato, Paulo Blikstein, and Ioana Literat. 2024. “Twisted Knowledge Construction on X/Twitter: An Analysis of Constructivist Sensemaking on Social Media Leading to Political Radicalization.” Information and Learning Sciences 125 (9): 693–719. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-12-2023-0210. [Available from UW libraries]

Friday February 21: Governance: Exit and Voice [Tentative][edit]

  • Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  • Turco, Catherine J. 2016. The Conversational Firm: Rethinking Bureaucracy in the Age of Social Media. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Frey, Seth, and Nathan Schneider. 2023. “Effective Voice: Beyond Exit and Affect in Online Communities.” New Media & Society 25 (9): 2381–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211044025.

Friday February 28: Governance: Commons-based Approaches [Tentative][edit]

  • Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
  • Hess, Charlotte, and Elinor Ostrom, eds. 2011. Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice. The MIT Press. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
  • Frischmann, Brett M., Michael J. Madison, and Katherine Jo Strandburg. 2014. Governing Knowledge Commons. Oxford University Press. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
  • Frey, Seth, P. M. Krafft, and Brian C. Keegan. 2019. “‘this Place Does What It Was Built for’: Designing Digital Institutions for Participatory Change.” Proceedings of the ACM Human-Computer Interaction. 3 (CSCW): 32:1-32:31. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359134. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Schneider, Nathan. 2024. Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.181. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
  • Silberman, M. Six. 2016. “Reading Elinor Ostrom in Silicon Valley: Exploring Institutional Diversity on the Internet.” In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP ’16), 363–68. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/2957276.2957311.

Optional:

Friday March 7: Governance: Democracy and Participation [Tentative][edit]

  • Michels, Robert. 2016. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchial Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Translated by Eden Paul. Martino Fine Books. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
  • Lipset, Seymour Marti.ng 1956. Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
  • Shaw, Aaron, and Benjamin M. Hill. 2014. “Laboratories of Oligarchy? How the Iron Law Extends to Peer Production.” Journal of Communication 64 (2): 215–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12082.
  • Freeman, Jo. 1972. “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 17 (January):151–64. [Forthcoming]
  • Dunbar-Hester, Christina. 2019. Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
  • Kelty, Christopher M. 2017. “Too Much Democracy in All the Wrong Places: Toward a Grammar of Participation.” Current Anthropology 58 (S15): S77–90. https://doi.org/10.1086/688705. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Kelty, Christopher, and Seth Erickson. 2018. “Two Modes of Participation: A Conceptual Analysis of 102 Cases of Internet and Social Media Participation from 2005–2015.” The Information Society 34 (2): 71–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2017.1414092. [Available from UW libraries]

Optional:

Friday March 14: Final Presentations[edit]

The full class session will be devoted to final presentations.

Assignments[edit]

Your assignments consist of two major projects: (1) weekly response papers and in-class discussion, and (2) a final research project. Your grade in the course will be assessed in the #Grading and Assessment section of this page.

Weekly Response Papers[edit]

This quarter includes 9 class sessions with readings (the tenth and final session will be devoted to final presentations). You must each write 9 response papers that address the readings for each day of class with reading. Response papers should be no more than 1,000 words (about two single-spaced pages). Please respect this maximum to manage your workload and others. So everyone will have a chance to incorporate them into their readings, response papers should be posted to our course website the day before (i.e., before 11:59pm on Thursday) so that the instructors and students can read and construct their responses on Friday.

Regarding content, response papers allow you to engage the readings by identifying common or conflicting premises, thinking through potential implications, offering political or cultural examples, posing well-supported objections, or outlining theoretical or critical extensions. Providing a short quote or two that directly engages the texts is often helpful. Please also pose one or two open-ended questions that may serve as jumping-off points for our in-class conversation. A good response paper will include minimal summarizing, at most, and focus more on responding to ideas. Justify your reflections with evidence from the text and beyond; for example, don't just say what you wonder about or find interesting without explaining why you find it interesting.

Turn in your response paper to Canvas by posting a new message on the appropriate the discussion board in Canvas.

After you post your reflection, please read all of your classmates’ responses before class and briefly respond to a minimum of two of your classmates’ posts before noon on the day of class and nominate at least a question or two for discussion.

Final Project[edit]

For the final assignment, I want you to take what you've learned in the class and apply it to an original research project. I see this as taking one of several forms: (1) a detailed research plan/proposal; (2) a completed original research manuscript (i.e., a "submission-ready" draft of a journal article or conference paper, or some part of such a paper per arrangement); (3) a replication/revisit of an important and influential study; (4) something else as per arrangement with the instructor.

Final Project Identification[edit]

Due Date
Friday February 7 @ 11:59pm
Deliverables
Turn in through Canvas
Maximum Length
1,000 words (~1 page double spaced)

You will submit an extended abstract and/or proposal for your final project. Because I understand that the most useful specific shape of this might vary, I'm happy to go back and forth with you on the details if you believe that a 1,000-word extended abstract that lays out the proposed work is not going to be sufficient or appropriate.

In either case, I will give you feedback on these write-ups and will let you each know if I think you have identified a project that might be too ambitious, trivial, broad, or narrow.

Final Deliverables[edit]

Final Presentation Dates
Friday March 14 (in class)
Paper Due Date
Friday March 21 @ 11:59pm
Maximum paper length
8,000 words
Deliverables
  • Turn in a copy of the presentation before class (i.e., 1:30pm on Friday March 21) in the Canvas dropbox ("Final presentation")
  • Turn in a copy of the paper in Canvas ("Final paper")

For your final project, I expect students to build on the final project identification assignment to describe what they have done and found. I'll expect every student to give both:

  • A final presentation
  • A final report that is not more than 8,000 words. I expect most will be in the 4,000-6,000 word range.

You will be evaluated on the degree to which you have demonstrated that you understand and engage with the course material, not on the specifics of your research projects. The very best papers will give us all a new understanding of some aspect of course material and change how I teach some portion of this course in the future.

Details on the presentation:

  • The presentation content should be an overview and preview of your final project as described above.
  • Everybody will have 20 minutes for their presentation and the Q&A. I strongly suggest having your presentation be about 12 minutes so that you have about 8 minutes for feedback from your classmates. If you present for much less than that, I'm afraid conveying a clear sense of your argument will be challenging. If you present for much longer, there will not be enough time for Q&A. [Tentative]

Grading and Assessment[edit]

The writing rubric section of the detailed page on assessment gives the rubric I will use to evaluate both your #Weekly Response Papers and your #Final Projects.

Your participation in the course will be assessed using my detailed User:Benjamin Mako Hill/Assessment#Participation Rubric. Please also pay close attention to the section on maintaining participation balance.

I will compute your final grade in the following way:

  • Weekly response papers: 30%
  • Participation in class discussion: 25%
  • Final project identification: 5%
  • Final presentation: 10%
  • Final project: 30%

Administrative Notes[edit]

Office Hours[edit]

Office hours will be appointment—I'm usually available via chat during "business hours." You can view out my calendar and/or put yourself on it. If you schedule a meeting, we'll meet in the Jitsi room (makooffice). You will get a link to the room through the scheduling, although you should be able to find it by navigating through https://meet.jit.si.

Religious Accommodations[edit]

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

Student Conduct[edit]

The University of Washington Student Conduct Code (WAC 478-121) defines prohibited academic and behavioral conduct and describes how the University holds students accountable as they pursue their academic goals. Allegations of misconduct by students may be referred to the appropriate campus office for investigation and resolution. More information can be found online at https://www.washington.edu/studentconduct/ Safety

Call SafeCampus at 206-685-7233 anytime–no matter where you work or study–to anonymously discuss safety and well-being concerns for yourself or others. SafeCampus’s team of caring professionals will provide individualized support, while discussing short- and long-term solutions and connecting you with additional resources when requested.

Use of AI Tools[edit]

Unless otherwise noted, work submitted for this course must be your own. Unless otherwise specified, using generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, when working on assignments is forbidden. Using generative AI outside of specified tasks will be considered academic misconduct and subject to investigation.

The assignments in this class have been designed to challenge you to develop creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. Using AI technology will limit your capacity to develop these skills and meet the learning goals of this course.

If you have any questions about what constitutes academic integrity in this course or at the University of Washington, please contact me to discuss your concerns.

Please note that I do not consider grammar/spellchecking a prohibited use of AI.

Text adapted from: UW sample syllabus statements.

Academic Dishonesty[edit]

This includes cheating on assignments, plagiarizing (misrepresenting work by another author as your own, paraphrasing or quoting sources without acknowledging the original author or using information from the internet without proper citation), and submitting the same or similar paper to meet the requirements of more than one course without instructor approval. Academic dishonesty in any part of this course is grounds for failure and further disciplinary action. The first incident of plagiarism will result in the student’s receiving a zero on the plagiarized assignment. The second incident of plagiarism will result in the student’s receiving a zero in the class.

Disability Resources[edit]

If you have already established accommodations with Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please communicate your approved accommodations through their processes at your earliest convenience so we can discuss your needs in this course.

If you have not yet established services through DRS, but have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodations (conditions include but not limited to; mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts), you are welcome to contact DRS at 206-543-8924 or uwdrs@uw.edu or disability.uw.edu. DRS offers resources and coordinates reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities and/or temporary health conditions. Reasonable accommodations are established through an interactive process between you, your instructor(s) and DRS. It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create inclusive and accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law.

Mental Health[edit]

Your mental health is important. If you are feeling distressed, anxious, depressed, or in any way struggling with your emotional and psychological wellness, please know that you are not alone. College can be a profoundly difficult time for many of us.

Resources are available for you:

Other Student Support[edit]

Any student who has difficulty affording groceries or accessing sufficient food to eat every day or who lacks a safe and stable place to live and believes this may affect their performance in the course is urged to contact the graduate program advisor for support. Furthermore, please notify the professors if you are comfortable in doing so. This will enable us to provide any resources that we may possess (adapted from Sara Goldrick-Rab). Please also note the student food pantry, Any Hungry Husky at the ECC.

Other Topics[edit]

There are more topics that I wanted to cover than we had time for. I've included some material that was cut in preparing this syllabus in an /Additional topics subpage.

Credit and Notes[edit]

Although this is my first time teaching a class like this, I drew inspiration and ideas for papers to include from these other classes:

Retrieved from "https://wiki.communitydata.science/index.php?title=Organizing_and_Governance_in_Online_Communities_(UW_COM597_Winter_2025)&oldid=272885"
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
Powered by MediaWiki