Considering recent calls for change towards a more liveable tourism academia, critical participatory action research is combined with duoethnography to develop The Academic Line—a humorous comic project about academic life. Traditional theories of humour are used to leverage the effectiveness of comics as communicative devices and explored how and to what extent the project promoted solidarity, reflexivity, well-being, and change. This study reveals the concrete commitment to fostering change within and potentially improving academia, and to experiment with a form of communication, which is still underexplored in the scholarly sphere but fruitfully applied in other contexts to raise awareness of and prompt discussion about crucially important issues.
Virtual communities are online spaces with potential of integration of (member-generated) content and conversations [7,8]. In our research project we are interested in the adoption and building of virtual communities in organized sports, that is to say in the voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) in the Netherlands. Since these VSCs have massively transferred their communication with members from paper club magazines to online channels, these virtual communities arise from the use of a growing number of websites, e-mail and social network sites (SNSs). Although virtual communities are broadly investigated, such as social communities, brand communities, and public communities, there is little scholarly interest in virtual communities of member organizations that VSCs are an example of. The study that is to be presented at SECSI 2019 concerns the clubs’ use of SNSs (ClubSNSs), such as Facebook and Twitter, within the virtual communities. These SNSs are increasingly used by the VSCs to facilitate organizational communication and to obtain a good internal climate [9]. However, academic understanding of the impact of ClubSNSs’ content and conversations on the organizational performance of the VSC is in its infancy. In our study, we examined this impact of ClubSNSs use on the involvement among members and whether we can explain this by members’ identification with the club. Furthermore, we have tried to categorize ClubSNSs by content types, such as informative, conversational or sociable ClubSNSs, and their role in stimulating the use of ClubSNSs. In this way we attempted to gain insight into the effect of types of ClubSNSs’ content and conversations on membership involvement and the mediating role of identification with the club. This insight can help VSCs to develop effective ClubSNS channels that contribute to organizational goals such as supportive and loyal membership.
MULTIFILE
Virtual communities are online spaces with potential of integration of (member-generated) content and conversations [7,8]. In our research project we are interested in the adoption and building of virtual communities in organized sports, that is to say in the voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) in the Netherlands. Since these VSCs have massively transferred their communication with members from paper club magazines to online channels, these virtual communities arise from the use of a growing number of websites, e-mail and social network sites (SNSs). Although virtual communities are broadly investigated, such as social communities, brand communities, and public communities, there is little scholarly interest in virtual communities of member organizations that VSCs are an example of. The study that is to be presented at SECSI 2019 concerns the clubs’ use of SNSs (ClubSNSs), such as Facebook and Twitter, within the virtual communities. These SNSs are increasingly used by the VSCs to facilitate organizational communication and to obtain a good internal climate [9]. However, academic understanding of the impact of ClubSNSs’ content and conversations on the organizational performance of the VSC is in its infancy. In our study, we examined this impact of ClubSNSs use on the involvement among members and whether we can explain this by members’ identification with the club. Furthermore, we have tried to categorize ClubSNSs by content types, such as informative, conversational or sociable ClubSNSs, and their role in stimulating the use of ClubSNSs. In this way we attempted to gain insight into the effect of types of ClubSNSs’ content and conversations on membership involvement and the mediating role of identification with the club. This insight can help VSCs to develop effective ClubSNS channels that contribute to organizational goals such as supportive and loyal membership.
MULTIFILE
