Supporting Better Communication in Academic Communities of Practice : An Empirical Study of AIS/ISWorld

The AIS/ISWorld mailing list is the premier global communication tool for academicians in the information systems area. This paper employs content analysis of archival data to report on an exploratory study of the usage of ISWorld over a four year period between 2002 and 2006. We develop a coding scheme based on three theoretically distinct levels of interactive communication, and apply it to investigate how ISWorld community members use the mailing list for the purposes of information dissemination, knowledge exchange, and knowledge creation. Our analysis offers important insights on the evolution of the ISWorld mailing list, user characteristics and communication patterns, as well as the alignment between the design of the communication tool and the organizational goals of the community. Contrary to the stated AIS mission, our findings show that the usage of the ISWorld mailing list is increasingly shifting towards information broadcasting rather than interactive knowledge exchange and knowledge construction. The paper concludes with some design and governance recommendations for making ISWorld a more effective communication tool for the IS community