Thanks to Google+ and Stephen Downes, there is a nice article on “lurking” by Christy Tucker, Lurking or Legitimate Peripheral Participation. I’ve written on the topic of lurkers several times. Christy closes her post with some interesting questions – along with the thoughts she poses throughout.
What do you think? Are there communities where you are in the center of the action, but others where you’re on the periphery? Is there a place for lurking in learning communities, or should everyone be an active participant? If we’re designing learning with social media, can we focus just on social learning, or can we also support use of social media for peripheral participation?
The problem with calling it “lurking” makes everyone think negative thoughts. Like our community is full of Peeping Tom’s or other people with nefarious intent. People who don’t talk are still participating and learning – just in some non-obvious ways. Number one: without people in the room, the community withers and dies. Once the community grows, there is just no good way for everyone to raise their voice. In fact, the cacophony can run people off just as easily as not enough: communities develop their own balance in this regard.
So, what are some things that non-active (or peripheral) participants bring to a community?
- They advocate for new members.
- They build upon the ideas from one community in another.
- They may speak when they have something they feel like contributing.
- They are the audience to hear the conversation. (I know a very small fraction of the readers on my blog – and a similar number of the participants of my other regular hangouts. The fact that they are there keeps me writing.)
[Photo: "Peeping Tom" by Jessica Park]
Sourced from: Knowledge Jolt with Jack
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on Jul 19th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Jack – I agree that the word ‘lurking’ makes this behavior seem negative in some way. However, I regularly ‘lurk’ on several blogs and LinkedIn lists, including your Knowledge Jolt blog. This has helped me immensely as I have learned about the LOC and KM professions during my time in graduate school. There does seem to be a tipping point where I am willing to slowly dip my toe in and make a few comments or share bits of info. But I first need to understand the community, make sure it is one that I want to be a part of and determine if I actually have something useful to say. I am in support of designing virtual communities that encourage lurking. This is what legitimate peripheral participation is all about!
on Jul 19th, 2011 at 10:03 am
Am thinking about a new word to use…..are people who lurk sponges, observers, readers???
on Jul 19th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Glad you enjoyed my post.
I agree that “lurking” does have a negative connotation to it. It’s not as negative as “leeching” or “taking” (both of which I’ve heard recently as “synonyms” for lurking), but it definitely implies a value judgement. I was irked by the negative response to lurking in the #lrnchat discussion, which went as far as to call lurking “creepy.”
I like Alan Levine’s observation: “Reading is lurking. Listening is lurking. Sitting on a park bench is lurking.”
On our blogs, we do know our lurking audience is out there because they do leave us little “breadcrumbs”: hit statistics, email subscribers, RSS views, etc. We do get some value from the numbers of lurkers viewing our content, I think, even if it isn’t as interesting as when they engage us directly in conversation.
on Jul 24th, 2011 at 7:09 pm
[...] Look, I’m lurking – The Knowledge Lens [...]