Tribalism and Conflict: Conflict as a social unifier in a technologically enabled community

Abstract

Online communities are complex and fluid environments that do not readily submit to critical examinations by the Information Systems research community. This paper offers a perspective on these communities that identifies a conflict-based taxonomy of roles and identities. This enables the potential for more erudite discussions that explore the full scope and implications of these communities within the contemporary Information Systems context. We identify three core roles with online communities as the initial genera in a possibly expansive taxonomy of identities. These roles, the Big Man, the Sorcerer and the Trickster can all be identified within the online finance forum. This forum is used by this paper as a specific example of the taxonomy of online community participantís roles. The paper stresses that these roles are reliant to a large degree on their position within a community and are not in themselves identities that can be sustained in isolation.