ePart 2013: Electronic Participation pp 80-94 | Cite as

"Let Us Talk to People, Not to Computers": Obstacles for Establishing Relationships and Trust in Social Workers’ Online Communities of Practice

  • Azi Lev-On
  • Odelia Adler
Conference paper
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 8075)

Abstract

The paper studies social workers’ online communities of practice and presents the perceptions of their members about such online communities’ potential for establishing relationships and trust. The interviewees expressed three main clusters of reasons for why relationships and trust cannot be properly established and sustained through online communities of practice. These reasons involve general hostility to computer-mediated communication as an arena for relationship development, the non-computerized professional environment of social workers, and particular features of the communities that were studied.

Keywords

communication online communities communities of practice trust relationships 
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Copyright information

© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • Azi Lev-On
    • 1
  • Odelia Adler
    • 2
  1. 1.School of CommunicationAriel UniversityArielIsrael
  2. 2.Department of CommunicationBen-Gurion UniversityBeer ShevaIsrael

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