Establishment of community of practice within a line group through computer-mediated discourse

Abstract

The purposes of this study are to investigate the establishment of Communities of Practice (CoPs) and the notion of virtual communities within the Line Group titled “อนุกิจกรรมMMFest62”, in which members are employees and temporary employees of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) - Mae Moh. The researcher employs a Community of Practice Framework, Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA), and Speech Act Analysis. The findings illustrate that the focused Line Group exhibits characteristics of a community of practice, composed of all three fundamental elements: domain, community, and practice, where members share a common objective, assignment, and identity, have interactions with each other both online and in in-person events, which develop and sustain their relationships and they share a common vocabulary. Life cycles of CoPs via the Line application can be divided into four stages: pre-formation, potential, sustaining, and transformation. Before becoming members of an online community, the participants were members of a co-located community, an organization. They interacted and developed relationships with each other via the Line Group in order to achieve an assigned task. Once the task was completed, the group faded away. Additionally, while examining the notion of virtual communities, the researcher focused on two criteria: participation and the roles of the members. The researcher categorized participants into three groups according to their roles and organizational levels: Executives, Coordinators, and Subcommittee. The participant group who sent the most texts was the Coordinators (56.96%), the Subcommittee group accounted for 40.12%, and the Executives (2.92%), respectively. This shows that the participants who were assigned as Coordinators were the core participants in the Line Group. The roles of participants were observed through speech act analysis. It was revealed that there are four speech acts found in the chat log: representatives, directives, expressives, and commissives. These four speech acts were represented by different activities. The highest frequency speech activity of the group was in speech statement, showing that the Line Group is a platform for information and work progress shared among members. Interestingly, the Coordinators sent more directive messages than the Executives. It is assumed that the Executives may have assigned the Coordinators to be their representatives in following up the work on an online platform and directly conveyed their commands via other platforms such as in face-to-face meetings, which are usually arranged at the office. Accordingly, the Coordinators, whose levels are subordinate, become the leaders of the Line Group.