Microblogging's impact on collaboration awareness: A field study of microblogging within and between project teams

Dejin Zhao, Mary Beth Rosson, Tara Matthews, Thomas Moran

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Despite popular use of IM, Email, and other social software (e.g., blogs and wikis) in collaborative work, the maintenance of project status awareness among team members remains a critical research problem. The lack of timely project status sharing in teams can critically limit task coordination efficiency, expertise sharing opportunities, and development of other social components in teamwork (e.g., common ground building, and feeling of connectedness). In this context, we report a field study indicating that Microblogging as a light-weight informal communication media helped foster exchanging of non-critical updates (e.g., small milestones towards completing a task; problems/issues one's working on, but not too critical for reporting; undeveloped ideas/thoughts just came out of a conversation) among co-workers as social interaction. We also report how such microblog-mediated informal sharing benefited work collaboration in various ways within and across project teams.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems, CTS 2011
Pages31-39
Number of pages9
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011
Event2011 12th International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems, CTS 2011 - Philadelphia, PA, United States
Duration: May 23 2011May 27 2011

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems, CTS 2011

Other

Other2011 12th International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems, CTS 2011
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPhiladelphia, PA
Period5/23/115/27/11

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Control and Systems Engineering

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