abstract

Abstract
DRAFT 1160355425 350 words

This research project comprises a literature review, and an outline of further research on the rationale for applying practice based theories (PBTs, e.g. actor-network theory, activity theory, and communities of practice) to the study of content classification in databases on the World Wide Web, in particular the new phenomena of 'social-tagging' (in applications like Del.icio.us™, Flickr™, and CiteULike), ant its capacity to support knowledge sharing in online communities.

The rationale for applying PBTs to the study of social tagging, and similar distributed content classification practices ... [//argue why I use **these** pbts//]

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) brings focuses on the dynamic relations between both human and non-human 'actors' in a heterogeneous network, which, could be used to analysis the for example between dynamic network relations of users, their tagging tools, and the vocabularies of tags that many users collectively create. Activity theory (AT) has been used to study metadata, online social-systems, and e-learning, most often single systems, as opposed to a network of interlinked systems (e.g. multiple blogs with a shared set of tags). Consideration of AT’s application to the study of social-tagging raises questions as to whether or not community use of online social tagging systems can be modelled as a single 'activity system', versus the need for a view of community knowledge as networks of interlinked artefacts, distributed across multiple systems. The wide range communities of practice (CoPs) literature includes ethnographic field work, and business doctrine on how to cultivate CoPs, together with debates on the social nature of knowledge sharing, and stories of how online systems can support the discourses within communities of distributed professionals. //how is the lessons in the CoPs literature relevant?//

Various socio-technical approaches to the development of more complex tools that support social tagging for community knowledge sharing have been envisioned, yet few have attempted to apply PBTs to the use of tools like Del.icio.us. Consideration is made of the need for an online discursive-space to bring together researchers and resources for application of PBTs to the study of social tagging and online knowledge sharing.

[//todo// how to paragraphs 3 & 4 support paragraph 1?]