LURKING ON LURKERS

WHAT TYPE OF LURKER ARE YOU? LURKING ON LURKERS WITHIN KNOWLEDGE-TRANSFER ECOSYSTEMS

For as long as the internet has existed, it has been estimated that about 90% of people online will never post, comment, blog, or message. Instead, they “lurk,” silently observing other users’ posts and exchanges.“Lurking” has an overwhelmingly negative connotation; and researcher initially described someone who “lurks” not only as a “non-contributor” to a community, but also someone who brings a sinister presence.

The “silent majority” of the internet may simply be “non-public participants” who, although rendered invisible by UI design choices - feel as engaged lurking in some places as they do contribute to others. Although not easily traceable, lurkers’ actions (reading, learning, bearing witness, remembering) have effects that often extend beyond any one online or IRL network.

As motivations and needs change, lurkers shift between different forms of lurking. Varying from pure consumption to periphery learning, lurkers tend to follow a more-than-average amount of content from a diverse range of potential sources. When considering who might hold the knowledge and memory of the internet—maybe it could be lurkers?

SOURCES:
[1] The rule of participation inequality

[2] Rafaeli, Sheizaf & Ravid, Gilad & Soroka, Vladimir. (2004).

De-Lurking in Virtual Communities: A Social Communication Network Approach to Measuring the Effects of Social and Cultural Capital. 10.1109/HICSS.2004.1265478.

[3] Edelmann, Noella. "13. What is Lurking? A Literature Review of Research on Lurking". The Psychology of Social Networking Vol.1: Personal Experience in Online Communities, Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter Open Poland, 2015, pp. 159-174. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110473780-015

[4] Bozkurt, Aras & Honeychurch, Sarah & Singh, Lenandlar & Koutropoulos, Apostolos. (2017). Learners on the Periphery: Lurkers as Invisible Learners. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. 20. 191-211. 10.1515/eurodl-2017-0012.

[5] Nonnecke, B., & Preece, J. (2001). Why lurkers lurk. Americas Conference on Information Systems 2001.

[6] Adjin-Tettey, T.D. and Garman, A. (2022) ‘Lurking as a mode of listening in social media: Motivations-based typologies’, Digital Transformation and Society, 2(1), pp. 11–26. doi:10.1108/dts-07-2022-0028.

[7] https://lib.edist.ro/library/reno-preliminary-materials-for-the-theory-of-the-lurker

[8] Na Sun, Patrick Pei-Luen Rau, Liang Ma,Understanding lurkers in online communities: A literature review, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 38,2014,Pages 110-117, ISSN 0747-5632,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.022.(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214003008 )

[9] Linda Besner, Real Life Mag Involuntary Lurking -

As social media have evolved into platforms for sharing pain, I hover because I don’t know what to say (2018). https://reallifemag.com/new-feelings-involuntary-lurking/

[12] Enrica Loria, Lennart E. Nacke, and Johanna Pirker. 2021. The Quirks of Being a Wallflower: Towards Defining Lurkers and Loners in Games Through A Systematic Literature Review. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 397, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3451830

[13] Yang, Xue & Li, Guoxin & Huang, Songshan. (2016). Perceived Online Community Support, Member Relations, and Commitment: Differences between Posters and Lurkers. Information & Management. 54. 10.1016/j.im.2016.05.003.

[14] Cranefield, Jocelyn; Yoong, Pak; and Huff, Sid L. (2015) "Rethinking Lurking: Invisible Leading and Following in a Knowledge Transfer Ecosystem," Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 16(4), .DOI: 10.17705/1jais.00394 https://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol16/iss4/3