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adfa, p. 1, 2011.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
No Space for Emotional Support: Communities of
Practice as Arenas of Cognitive Exchange
Azi Lev-On1, Nili Steinfeld1
1
Ariel University, Ariel, Israel
{azilevon,nilisteinfeld}@gmail.com
Abstract. This study examines whether interactions between members of
communities of practice typically have cognitive or social character. Content
analysis of more than 7000 posts, automatic words frequencies analyses as well
as interviews with community members demonstrate that the interactions be-
tween members of the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs' communities of prac-
tice, the subject of the present study, emphasize the cognitive rather than social
aspects. This emphasis is reflected in the content of posts, the avoidance from
discussing personal cases or offering emotional support and more. The findings
are particularly interesting given the nature of these communities as a space for
social workers whose work requires and is characterized by a high degree of so-
cial and emotional interactions.
Keywords: Online Communities of Practice, Content Analysis, Digital Gov-
ernment, Organizational Systems, Social Services, Cognitive Exchange.
1 Introduction
Knowledge has always been perceived as an essential resource for the progression
and effectiveness of an organization, but in the past decades its importance grew even
more, and it is perceived by many as a central mean for achieving competitive ad-
vantage and long-term success [1] .
The field of knowledge management was traditionally dominated by the focus on
technology, but there has been an increased understanding of the role of people in the
process of knowledge management, and today it is commonly accepted that the key to
successful knowledge management within organizations lies in the relationships be-
tween individuals, and an organization's ability to leverage its knowledge is largely
dependent on the people who work within it and the flow of information between
them []. Therefore, social relations between members are significant in understand-
ing the success and operations of the community of practice.
Online communities of practice are groups of professionals who share a common
interest in the examination of professional issues related to their work [9,14]. In some
communities, the social aspect of communication between members is particularly
important, and fulfills needs that are impossible to similarly satisfy in offline contexts.
For example, people with unique characteristics, or those who have social difficulties,
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may find it difficult to create peer groups in their offline social environment. People
who belong to marginalized groups, as well, typically seek connections to people
similar to them, who may not always be found in their immediate environment. The
Internet creates novel opportunities for social contacts in such cases []. Due to in-
tensive and stressful work, both physically and emotionally, social workers often
require support and sympathy []. A closed online group where colleagues and part-
ners converge can function as place for ventilation, expression of support, solidarity,
and creation of social ties among participants.
However, the literature about user behavior in online communities focuses less on
the social aspects and more on the cognitive aspects of the use of the communities,
such as the amount and quality of the information shared, information overload, uses
of and gratifications from the information in the communities [6,8]. The focus on the
cognitive aspects is not surprising since these are online communities of practice, i.e.
groups of professionals who are interested in a joint examination of professional is-
sues related to their work. For this they share professional knowledge, tools, resources
and experiences. The amount of shared knowledge in communities, its flow and its
uses are therefore important aspects of such environments.
The research on the cognitive aspects of online communities of practice focuses on
the various motivations to contribute information [7,10,11,15]. Yet, although motiva-
tions to contribute information have been investigated in depth, there are no prospec-
tive studies that analyzed the content of communities of practice to learn whether
cognitive uses are indeed central in terms of the content uploaded to the communities.
This is the main contribution of the current study.
2 Research Environment and Methodology
This study analyzes the case of Israeli social workers' online communities of practice
established by the Ministry of Social Affairs.
The research on communities of practice presents a unique case in Israel, where a
government office established online discussion groups to allow interaction between
office staff and the wider community of practitioners and professionals in related
fields. Such communities may very well have advantages in terms of exposure of tacit
and local knowledge, improving the flow of knowledge between professionals and
even improving professional acquaintanceship and solidarity among workers [].
The communities of practice project of the Ministry of Social Affairs was estab-
lished in 2006, aiming to promote the development of methodologies of organization-
al learning among groups of social workers in the Israeli welfare system [4,14]. Since
the establishment of the project, more than 7,700 members have joined one or more of
31 communities. Registration to communities requires the approval of the communi-
ties' managers. All communication within the communities is identified using the real
names of the members. The list of members is available to all members of the com-
munity, and they know who might read the content they upload and comment on.
Community management is voluntary, and the managers receive a small reward in the
form of vouchers []. While the communities are hosted on governmental platforms,
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less than 30% of their members are government employees, and the rest are employed
in NGOs, municipalities and elsewhere [].
This study used three research methods. First, content analysis of 11 communities
of practice that were selected for the study was performed. The communities were
chosen to constitute a representative sample of the various communities in the project
in terms of the date of establishment (older communities vs. newer ones), the scope of
activity within the community (measured by the percentage of active members out of
all members of the community), the size of the community (measured by the number
of members in the community) and the areas of practice of the community (therapeu-
tic communities compared to communities engaged in formal issues and procedures).
We categorized communities as "therapeutic" if the topic of the community relates
directly to work with clients or specific populations that receive welfare services, and
"non-therapeutic" if the topic of the community is more related to organizational
needs, programs creation and general work related issues. Therefore, the communities
included in the study were composed of two groups.
The first group included communities that were categorized as therapeutic: Intel-
lectual Disability, Children at Risk, Immigrants and Inter-Cultural Issues, Blind
and the Visually Impaired, Domestic Violence, Foster care and Juvenile Delin-
quency.
The second group included non-therapeutic communities, which are more organi-
zational in nature (less concerned with clients and more concerned in estimations
and programs creation): Community Work, Policy and Performance, Welfare
Management at Municipalities and Organizational Learning.
In each community of practice all posts available at the time of data collection (be-
ginning of 2012) were analyzed. A total of 7248 posts were coded using a coding
sheet developed for the study.
The study involves two units of analysis: Single posts and threaded discussions (a
first post and at least one additional comment related to it). Thus, some of the catego-
ries in the coding sheet relate to posts and others to discussions.
Altogether, the coding sheet comprised 24 quantitative categories, which included
the identity of the author (manager or community member), time of publication, the
name of the community where the post was published, the post's order (is it a first
post, opening a new discussion or a response to a previous post), and a number of
categories relevant to the content of the post, as will be described later on. The posts
were coded by 13 coders after an intensive training and a reliability test, which re-
peated until an agreement rate of 90% between the coder and the leading researcher
was obtained in each of the categories of the coding book. In addition, the first set of
posts each coder has coded (usually 50-120 posts) were examined by the lead re-
searcher, who went over the coding to make sure that reliability is maintained.
The rationale behind looking at first posts distinctively is the assumption that when
community members initiate a new discussion, they dictate the topic of discussion.
Reply to messages being raised in previous posts will mainly deal with the issues
brought up in the first post. Therefore examining the first posts only allows us to
study the issues that community members decide to initiate discussions around.
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In particular, the following categories were used to code the content of messages:
Practical advice, which is directly related to daily work with clients, for example:
what is the impact of certain kinds of interventions?
Organizational advice, related to employees’ daily work unrelated to working with
clients, for example concerning forms, procedures, programs and courses.
Statements about the community’s theme, which are statements that relate not to
employees’ daily work, but to more general issues related to the community’s main
theme, for example: How to improve service for patients? How to improve the sta-
tus of blind people in the Israeli society?
Emotional support- addressing community members’ manifestations of charged
emotions (anger, frustration, fear, sadness, etc.) that are related to their work.
Additional categories were: academic advice (references to academic literature,
relevant research etc.); informing on an event or conference; greetings and grati-
tude; publication of a project or organization, submitting contact details, and final-
ly- other topics.
Another section in the coding sheet examined whether the message included shar-
ing of personal experiences. It was also examined whether posts included provision
and/or supply of assistance, and at the level of the entire thread, it was examined
whether questions raised in the discussion were answered.
Secondly, word frequency analysis (conducted with Corsis, formerly Tenka Text,
an open-source corpus analysis class library (Corsis),
1
and visualized using Wordle-
an online open-source tag cloud generator (Wordle)
2
) was used for linguistic analysis
of texts in the discussions of the various communities, to examine what are the main
issues discussed within the communities and whether they stay "on-topic", dealing
with the main topic of the community.
Finally, interviews were conducted with 71 community members. The interviewees
selected were sampled based on the level of involvement measured by the number of
logins to the community and the number of times they contributed content within the
community, so that the study involved members with low, medium and high involve-
ment in communities. The interviews were conducted by five interviewers across the
country, and the average length of an interview was about 45 minutes.
3 Hypotheses
The communities of practice of the Ministry of Social Affairs is a professional pro-
ject, established and managed by the Ministry, hosted on the Ministry's website and
its stated purpose is to promote organizational learning processes among employees.
Consequently, we expect that the perception of the project as will be reflected in the
approaches of members of the communities and the content of their posts, would be
that it is a place of cognitive interactions between colleagues, rather than a place of
1
We thank the developer, Cetin Sert, for the use of the tool.
2
We thank the developer, Jonathan Feinberg, for the use of the tool.
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social, emotional or personal engagements, in spite of the social and even emotional
character of the profession.
Accordingly, the following hypotheses are:
3.1 Subjects of Posts
H1. Posts will include mostly professional and organizational advice and involve less
emotional support.
H2. Posts that open new discussions will focus mostly on organizational and profes-
sional advice and less on emotional support.
H3. In therapeutic communities, due to the nature of work in the community, and the
mental challenges members of these communities are faced with, a higher percentage
of posts will contain emotional support. Still, they will be less prominent than profes-
sional and organizational advice.
3.2 Subjects of Discussions
H4. The discourse in discussions of the various communities tends to remain within
the practice field of the community (on-topic) and doesn't drift to other areas, personal
or social. The common words in each community will be words relevant to the com-
munity's field of activity.
3.3 Sharing Personal Experiences
H5. Community members will rarely share personal experiences from their work. The
subjects of posts will be more general and members will rarely discuss particular cas-
es.
H6. This tendency will also characterize the first posts in discussions. Community
members will rarely initiate discussions dealing with personal work cases.
H7. In therapeutic communities a higher percentage of messages containing sharing
of personal cases will be found. But such posts will still be rare.
4 Findings
4.1 General Findings
The dataset includes 7,248 posts. 22.1% of the posts in the dataset contained messag-
es requesting assistance from community members and 42.1% of the posts contained
provision of assistance. This indicates that for any question, a few answers were typi-
cally provided. In more than half of the discussions (55.1%) a relevant response to a
question was received during a discussion. When looking only at discussions in which
questions were raised, in 76.7% a relevant response was given. This portrays the
communities as having lively dynamics of knowledge circulation, where questions are
raised and answers provided.
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4.2 Subjects of Posts
What are the issues raised in discussions in the various communities of practice? Ta-
ble 1 presents the percentage of posts containing reference to the ten topics included
in the coding book. Note that many posts include a number of topics, therefore the
percentages total to more than 100%.
The findings support hypotheses H1-H3.
Of all the posts in the sample, the main topic (found in 39.3% of the posts) is pro-
fessional advice. The second most common topic (25.7%) is organizational advice.
Third prominent (23%) was statements about the community’s theme.
With the prominence of these issues in the posts, it is noticeable that emotional
support is uncommon among community members' posts. Only 3.4% of the posts in
the sample included emotional support.
Further analysis referred only to first posts that were published in the community.
There are 1509 first posts in the sample. The findings indicate similarities between the
first posts and all posts in the sample, where the two prominent topics in the first posts
are professional advice (35.1%) and organizational advice (26%). The third most
prominent topic among 16.8% of the first posts is a publication of a project or organi-
zation.
The percentage of the first posts that included emotional support is identical to the
percentage of all posts in the sample that included this topic- 3.4%. This is the least
common topic among all posts as well as among first posts.
Due to the therapeutic nature of some of the communities of practice, it can be ex-
pected that a higher percentage of messages containing emotional support will be
found in communities dealing with more therapeutic areas in nature, in comparison to
communities who's main concern is more organizational. In communities engaged in
therapeutic areas, where workers are faced with complex personal cases, we would
expect a higher demand from the community members for ventilation of feelings,
sharing or leaning on other members' shoulders for support.
A chi-square test was performed to examine the relation between the type of com-
munity (therapeutic or non-therapeutic) and degree of emotional support in members'
posts. The relation between these variables was significant (2= 22.35, p<0.01), sup-
porting hypothesis H3. The effect size was calculated using Cramer's v and was found
to be weak (r=0.06). In non-therapeutic communities, only 1.6% of the posts included
emotional support, while in therapeutic communities, 4% of the posts included such
aspect. Still, the percentage of only 4% within therapeutic communities strengthens
the conclusion that emotional support is rarely present in posts published in the com-
munities.
Table 1. Distribution of the posts' and first posts' subjects in the sample
Topic of post
% of all
posts
% of first
posts
Practical advice
39.3%
35.1%
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Organizational advice
25.7%
26%
Academic advice
6.4%
10.4%
Emotional support
3.4%
3.4%
Informing on an event or conference
8.1%
12.4%
Greetings and gratitude
10.9%
3.7%
Publication of a project or organiza-
tion
8.5%
16.8%
Submitting contact details
7.6%
9.3%
Statements about the community’s
theme
23%
12.5%
Other topics
8.6%
7%
Interviews with community members complement the findings suggesting that the
main use of the community is cognitive, and not social or emotional. Interviewees
emphasized the exchange of knowledge within the framework of the discussions in
the communities as the most fundamental aspect to them, an exchange of knowledge
which allows them to learn from the experience of others. An additional cognitive use
that was brought up is stimulation of creativity and original thought, with group dis-
cussions helping to come up with creative ways to solve professional problems.
Interviewees also see differences between communities in terms of emotional sup-
port, but insist that emotional support is not a main function of most communities.
Interviews revealed differences between respondents about the role of the communi-
ties as a place of support among members. One respondent expressed a firm stand
regarding emotional support:
"Not in any form! It should be something unmediated-by personal conversations
and not by interactive means. It gets lost through the computer [...] something emo-
tional has to be personal and not interactive".
Another member sees emotional support in contrast to the professional goals of the
communities:
"Communities need to be professional, and if it becomes the source of support-
that's a sign that the situation is difficult…"
On the other hand, other members see the importance of support within the com-
munity:
"It's ventilation of emotions... Someone brings up something that happened to him
[...] and then it triggers reactions and sharing around emotions. Or someone who was
attacked [...] she was reinforced by all of us and... A lot of support".
However, the opinion expressed in the last quote does not represent the majority of
interviewees, and indeed we see that in some cases, and especially in therapeutic
communities, there was a small degree of emotional support in the posts analyzed, but
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these were rare in comparison to posts discussing professional or organizational mat-
ters.
4.3 Subjects of Discussions
Word frequency analysis was used to determine the most common words in each of
the communities.
3
The word clouds below show examples of the most frequent words
that appeared in all posts published in the communities analyzed, with stop-words in
Hebrew (such as "I", "it", "not", "of" etc.) excluded as customary. The size of the
word indicates the extent of its incidence in the texts, so that the most common words
are also the largest. Data from the analysis software, Corsis, includes information on
the frequency and percentage of each word in the text. The analysis clearly shows that
the texts that comprise the posts tend to deal with issues relevant to the community,
supporting hypothesis H4:
1. In the Foster Care community the words "the child" (appears 123 times in the
texts, 0.66% of the text) or "children" (51 times, 0.27% of the text), "the family"
(65 times, 0.35% of the text, and "family"- 51 times, 0.27%), "the foster" (86
times, 0.46%, and "foster"- 81 times, 0.44%, or "in foster"- 59 times, 0.32%, and
"foster care taker"- 53 times, 0.29%), "adoption" (48 times, 0.26%), "the guardi-
an" (43 times, 0.23%) and "the parents" (41 times, 0.22%) were the most frequent
words in the text.
2. In the Domestic Violence community the most common words were "violence"
(appears 910 times in the texts, 0.62% of the text, or "the violence"- 344 times,
0.23%, and "in violence"- 325 times, 0.22%), "women" (732 times, 0.50%), "for
therapy" (380 times, 0.26%, or "therapy"- 280 times, 0.19% of the text) and "in
the family" (349 times, 0.24%).
3. In the Children at Risk community common words were variations of "children"
(such as "children"- 108 times, 0.43%, "the child"- 60 times, 0.24%, "the chil-
dren"- 50 times, 0.20%, "for children"- 47 times, 0.19%, "child"- 43 times, 0.17%
etc.) and "parents" (such as "parents"- 56 times, 0.22%, "the parents"- 51 times,
0.20%, "the family"- 44 times, 0.17%).
4. The community Policy and Performance is characterized by a high frequency of
the words "the welfare" (27 times, 0.28%) and "organization" in various forms
(such as "organizational"- 30 times, 0.31%, "organizations"- 18 times, 0.19%,
"the office"- 16 times, 0.17%, "organization"- 13 times, 0.13%).
5. In the Blind and the Visually Impaired community especially prevalent are var-
iations of the word "blind" ("for the blind"- 34 times, 0.25%, "blind" in plural
form- 28 times, 0.21%, "the blind" in plural form- 22 times, 0.16%, ), variations
of "community" ("the community"- 23 times, 0.17%, "in the community"- 18
times, 0.13%, ) and "the service" (25 times, 0.19%).
3
The texts are originally in Hebrew and the frequent words were translated to English by the
researchers.
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6. In the community Organizational Learning most common were variations of the
word "knowledge" ("the knowledge"- 117 times, 0.52%, "knowledge"- 109 times,
0.48%, ), "learning" ("the learning"- 55 times, 0.24%, "learning"- 48 times,
0.21%), and "community" ("the community"- 92 times, 0.41%, "communities"-
55 times, 0.24%, "in the community"- 44 times, 0.20%, "for the community"- 43
times, 0.19%, "community"- 38 times, 0.17% etc).
7. The community Welfare Management at Municipalities was characterized by
the prevalence of the word "welfare" (51 times, 0.51%), variations of the word
"manager" ("manager"- 22 times, 0.22%, "the managers"- 17 times, 0.17%, "man-
agerial"- 14 times, 0.14%), and the words "social" (22 times, 0.22%), "services"
(21 times, 0.21%) and "departments" (17 times, 0.17%).
8. In the Community Work community most common were variations of the words
"work" ("work"- 229 times, 0.26%, "for work"- 196 times, 0.22%, "the work"-
160 times, 0.18%, "working"- 155 times, 0.17%, "the workers"- 114 times,
0.13%), "community" ("community" (female)- 428 times, 0.48%, "community"
(male)- 200 times, 0.22%, "community" (plural)- 140 times, 0.16%, "the commu-
nity"- 104 times, 0.12% etc), "activists" (119 times, 0.13%), and it is interesting to
note the frequency of the words "thank you" in this community (241 times,
0.27%).
9. The community Juvenile Delinquency is characterized by the prevalence of vari-
ations of the word "youth" ("The youngster"- 236 times, 0.24%, "youth"- 140
times, 0.14% "the youth"- 138 times, 0.14%, "teens"- 113 times, 0.11% etc), and
"probation" ("the probation"- 398 times, 0.40%, "probation"- 218 times, 0.22%),
probably as part of the pair of words "probation officer", while the words "officer"
and "officers" ware also frequent- 143 times and 104 times respectively".
10. In the Immigrants and Inter-Cultural Issues community, the most common
words were "immigrants" (11 times, 0.39%), "Ethiopia" (10 times, 0.35%), "in Is-
rael" (8 times, 0.28%), variations of the word "social" ("the social"- 8 times,
0.28%, "social" (plural)- 5 times, 0.18%, "and the social"- 4 times, 0.14%), and it
is interesting to note the frequency of the words "good luck" in this community (9
times, 0.32%).
11. The community Intellectual Disability was characterized by the prevalence of
the words "retardation" (545 times, 0.41%), "mental" (394 times, 0.30%) "in the
community" (261 times, 0.20%), "the tenants" (220 times, 0.17%, or "tenants"-
158 times, 0.12%), "at the framework" (201 times, 0.15%) and "at the center"
(179 times, 0.14%).
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Foster Care
Community Work
Fig. 1. Word clouds of the 100 most common words in the communities Foster Care and
Community Work (Source: Wordle).
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4.4 Sharing Personal Experiences
The findings support hypotheses H5-H7:
The communities of practice at the Ministry of Social Affairs were created to serve
as a safe space to raise professional dilemmas, and as a platform for discussions on
methods of conduct that should be performed with different clients. However, it ap-
pears that the members of the communities rarely share information related to person-
al cases they encounter in their work. Among all posts in the sample, only 6.6% share
a personal case related to work. A slightly higher percentage can be found in first
posts- 9.7% include sharing of a personal case, but this is still a fairly low percentage
considering that these are communities of practice of social workers.
In this case as well, it is natural to assume that therapeutic communities will in-
clude a higher percentage of messages containing sharing of personal cases than
communities revolving around issues that are more organizational or principle in na-
ture. Therefore, a chi-square test was performed to examine the relation between the
type of community (therapeutic or non-therapeutic) and degree of sharing personal
cases in posts published in the community. The relation between these variables was
was found to be weak (r=0.03). In non-therapeutic communities, 5.1% of the posts
included sharing of a personal case, while in therapeutic communities, 7% of the posts
included this aspect. Still, 7% is a pretty low degree of sharing when dealing with
communities of practice of care-givers in the social services.
5 Discussion
The findings clearly indicate that the communities of practice are first and foremost a
place of professional advice, exchange of knowledge and a place of general discus-
sion of organizational, practical and general community-related issues. The study
suggests that the discourse within communities of practice tends to remain within the
occupational field of the community-as expressed in the analysis of the most common
words in each community.
Despite the importance of social interactions for the success of online communi-
ties, as indicated by the literature, analysis of the content of the posts in the communi-
ties suggests that community members deal primarily with practical and organization-
al issues, both when they are initiating new discussions and when they are participat-
ing in existing discussions, and they rarely deal with more personal or emotional is-
sues. Sharing personal experiences and cases is also quite rare.
The interviews with community members as well as content analysis of the posts
show that communities are perceived and used primarily as a space of cognitive and
professional interactions, and as an organizational learning platform. Although these
are communities of practice that serve the employees of the Ministry of Social Af-
fairs, which by virtue of their role deal with emotional challenges and complex social
situations which obviously can lead sometimes to distress, it is clear that they do not
see these spaces as an appropriate place for emotional support or social interactions.
Even within communities dealing with therapeutic issues they do not often turn to
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community members for assistance, sharing or reinforcement on a personal level, and
from the interviews it is also apparent that the idea of these communities being a plat-
form for sharing and support was seen by many of the members as misplaced. When
members need a comforting shoulder, they will choose other platforms for this pur-
pose and maintain the communities of practice as areas of professional discussions
among colleagues.
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