Expressing Territoriality in Collaborative Activity

Abstract

Territoriality, the expression of ownership towards an object, can emerge when social actors occupy a shared social space. In my research, I extend the study of territoriality beyond previous work in physical space in two key ways: 1) the object in question is virtual and 2) the social context is an online community engaged in collaborative activity. To do this, I observe the emergence of characteristic territorial behaviors (e.g. marking, control, defense) within collaborative authoring and social tagging. My dissertation then uses these observations to construct a theoretical framework for online territoriality to provide researchers and designers of groupware with guidelines with which to encourage ownership expression when appropriate.