Sensemaking in virtual environments:

a study of how people make sense of and act in a virtual conference.

Amber Marshall

Master of Communication (Organisational Communication)

COMU7009 Thesis

Semester 1 2010

Acknowledgements

Though this is only a semester-long thesis, it is a project I have been thinking about and

working on for over a year, and one which I am very proud to have accomplished. This paper

marks the end of my degree of Master of Communication (Organisational Communication), a

field that has become my career since I began my study in mid-2008. I could not have completed

this thesis or my degree with such deep fulfillment if it were not for a few wonderful people.

Firstly, Jorgen Sandberg, thank you for your expert guidance, rigorous challenging of my work,

and encouragement to aim high and even take up a career in academia. Secondly, thank you to

my partner, Brett Joubert, who was not only my “sugar daddy” when I was a full time student but

my rock in times of both stress and success. And finally, thank you to my housemates and

friends, Jane McCrory (editor extraordinaire), Emma Cushworth, Hannah Savins, Mandy Lear,

and Jess Huddart, who have tirelessly barracked from the sidelines.

Abstract

Sensemaking is a highly influential and well-developed theory which contends that how

people make sense of their world determines their actions. Karl Weick is the founding father of

sensemaking and his theory has been employed by many scholars to advance understanding of

human action in areas such as strategy, decision making, and trust in organisations. However,

despite the increasing popularity of internet-based organisations, sensemaking in virtual

environments is poorly understood. The aim of this study is to examine how sensemaking forms

the basis of human action in virtual environments by investigating the sensemaking processes of

participants in a virtual conference called Sustainability Virtual Summits – SmartICT. A virtual

ethnography methodology, a relatively new qualitative research approach developed to meet the

unique challenges of the virtual environment, was employed to achieve this aim. The results of

this study show that sensemaking in virtual environments differs to sensemaking in the real

world. Firstly, the processes by which participants made sense of and acted in the virtual

conference were different to the processes described in Weick’s sensemaking model, which was

developed based on real world environments. This led me to propose a new model of

sensemaking processes specific to virtual environments. Secondly, some characteristics of

sensemaking in the virtual conference were inconsistent with three of Weick’s seven central

concepts. Generally, while Weick suggests sensemaking is largely externally focused, I found

that sensemaking in the virtual conference was inward-looking. This was evidenced by the

participants’ inability to access external cues and inherent tendency to look inwards to make

sense of their environment. I term this phenomenon introspective sensemaking. This study has

potential implications for both theory and practice. Not only could the field of sensemaking be

broadened to create new knowledge about sensemaking in virtual environments, but my findings

may also inform more intuitive design of virtual environments along with more effective

strategies to manage virtual work.

Contents

1. Why study sensemaking in virtual environments?..................................................................1

2. Weick’s real world theory of sensemaking.............................................................................4

3. A virtual conference: the context of the study.........................................................................8

4. Methodology: virtual ethnography........................................................................................11

4.1 Participant observation approach....................................................................................13

4.2 Interviews........................................................................................................................14

4.3 Data analysis...................................................................................................................16

4.4 Validity and reliability....................................................................................................17

5. Results: sensemaking in the virtual conference.....................................................................19

5.1 Detailed description of the context ................................................................................19

5.2 My first virtual sensemaking episode ............................................................................23

5.3 Sensemaking processes in the virtual conference...........................................................24

5.4 Technical and interpersonal sensemaking.......................................................................27

5.5 Comparison of Weick’s model and the new model of sensemaking in virtual

environments..............................................................................................................................30

5.6 Introspective sensemaking..............................................................................................36

5.7 Facets of the virtual conference that support introspective sensemaking.......................37

6. Discussion..............................................................................................................................41

7. Limitations and further research............................................................................................45

8. Conclusion.............................................................................................................................46

9. Reference list.........................................................................................................................48

Figures, tables, and screenshots

Figure 1 – Weick’s sensemaking process (Weick 1995, Herrmann 2007)................................... 5

Figure 2 – Sensemaking processes in the virtual environment (virtual conference) ....................25

Figure 3 – Comparison of Weick’s model and the new model of sensemaking in virtual

environments................................................................................................................................ 30

Table 1 – Interviewee demographics ............................................................................................15

Table 2 – Data analysis process ...................................................................................................16

Screenshot 1 – Lobby ...................................................................................................................21

Screenshot 2 – vCard exchange in one-on-one chat session ........................................................21

Screenshot 3 – Roster view of conference participants ................................................................22

Screenshot 4 – General Message pop-up .....................................................................................22

1.

2. Why study sensemaking in virtual environments?

You have enrolled to attend an international professional conference. There will be key note speeches from leaders in the field, exhibition booths for you to wander through, sponsors of the conference to engage with, and delegates from around the world to network with. But there are no flights or hotel rooms to book, no new suit to purchase, no need to make work arrangements for your absence. In fact, you need not leave your home or office at all – this is a VIRTUAL conference. You log on to your computer and enter the conference website. You find yourself in the Lobby. It looks like a real conference – there is a billboard with sponsorship messages and signs that say ‘Auditorium’ and ‘Exhibit Hall’. There are people milling around the Lobby and you decide to explore the conference. What now? Where do I go? What do I do? Who can I talk to? What is everyone else doing? Am I in the right place? You look around for answers and quickly realise that it’s just you sitting at your desk. It’s up to you to figure it out on your own. Welcome to the world of making sense in virtual environments.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how sensemaking occurs in virtual environments

compared to how sensemaking occurs in the ‘real world’. Sensemaking is one of the most

influential theories in organisation studies and contends that how people make sense of their

environment determines their actions. Karl Weick introduced the term ‘sensemaking’ in 1979 in

‘The social psychology of organizing’ (Weick 1979), which he later built on in his landmark book

‘Sensemaking in organizations’ (Weick 1995). Over the last thirty years Weick has continued to

champion his sensemaking theory, partnering with and influencing other authors to explore

sensemaking in areas such as strategy (Kurtz & Snowden 2003; Schneider 1997), decision making

(Snowden 2005; Klein 2004; Daft & Weick 1984), knowledge management (Choo & Johnson

2004; Thomas, Sussman & Henderson 2001), trust in organisations (Adobor 2003), identity (Ojha

2005), and organisational change (Weick & Quinn 1999; Gioia & Chittipeddi 1991). A number of

overview articles (Anderson 2006; Holt & Sandberg 2010) suggest that Weick’s theory of

sensemaking is the foundation of the field of sensemaking. Indeed, in 2006 the Journal of

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Organisation Studies published a special issue on the topic of sensemaking “in honour of Karl

Weick” (Sutcliffe, Brown & Putman 2006) which is testament to Weick’s dominance in the field.

Further, in a citation analysis of all citations of Weick (1979) in three top organisation studies

journals Anderson (2006) found that citations of Weick’s work are rarely critical or involve

empirical tests, suggesting that Weick’s theory has gone relatively unchallenged over the last thirty

years.

Weick’s theory of sensemaking was established at a time when virtual environments did not

exist. The theory was founded on research of ‘real world’ organisational practices, that is, practices

that take place in a traditional, face-to-face manner. Through application and extension of Weick’s

theory to various topics extensive knowledge has been accumulated about sensemaking in the real

world. Far less is known, however, about sensemaking in virtual environments, which is a serious

shortcoming in existing sensemaking literature. Virtual environments have become commonplace in

organisations, as evidenced by the exponential growth of internet usage world-wide over the last ten

years. For example, since December 2000 the number of global internet users has risen six-fold

from 360,985,492 to 1,802,330,457 (Internet World Stats 2010). As such, sensemaking in virtual

environments is deserving of attention from researchers.

Despite the prevalence of virtual technologies in today’s organisations, studies about

sensemaking in virtual environments are extremely rare; only a few studies (Herrmann 2007;

Cecez-Kecmanovic 2004; Faraj, Kwon & Watts 2004; Kavanagh & Kelly 2002) attempt to

investigate this topic. A major drawback of these studies is that they impose Weick’s real world

theory of sensemaking on the virtual environment, failing to acknowledge and address the unique

challenges of the virtual environment and the potential consequences for how sense is made in those

environments. My research aims to address this deficit. By taking the point of departure not from

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Weick’s sensemaking model but from the virtual environment itself, my study, unlike previous

studies, offers the opportunity to examine sensemaking in virtual environments in and of its own

right. I then compare my conception of sensemaking in virtual environments to Weick’s real world

conception of sensemaking. Hence, the aim of the study is to investigate how sensemaking occurs

in virtual environments compared to how sensemaking occurs in the real world. This aim may be

translated into two research questions: (1) by what processes do people make sense of and act in

virtual environments? and (2) to what extent does sensemaking in virtual environments differ from

sensemaking in the real world?

There are potential theoretical and practical implications for this research. Firstly, if

sensemaking in virtual environments is found to be different from real world sensemaking, current

knowledge of sensemaking may be expanded to include virtual environments, an area of the field

presently neglected in the literature. Further, by providing a greater understanding of how people

make sense of and act in virtual environments this research may help to improve the design of

virtual environments and inform more effective management strategies for virtual organisations in

areas such as leadership, motivation, and work flow. Therefore, if virtual environments can be built

and managed with the explicit needs of the virtual sensemaker in mind the overall uptake and

effectiveness of virtual organisations may be improved.

The structure of this paper is as follows. Firstly, I explain Karl Weick’s real world theory of

sensemaking, which is representative of the broader sensemaking field. Secondly, I introduce the

site of my study, a virtual conference (a type of virtual environment), and conceptualise the greater

context of the study, the internet. Thirdly, I explain and justify my methodology - virtual

ethnography - providing an in-depth description of its components as well as ethical considerations

for its use. I then present my findings, which comprise a significant portion of this paper. Finally, I

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conclude the paper with a discussion of these findings including limitations, contributions,

implications, and suggestions for further research.

3. Weick’s real world theory of sensemaking

Because Weick’s work forms the basis of sensemaking literature, I have limited my review

of sensemaking to two of Weick’s seminal works (Weick 1995; Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005)

with limited reference to other authors’ research. Weick (1995, p. 4) states that sensemaking is

“well named because, literally, it means making of sense”. Further, “sensemaking is about action…

(It) is as much a matter of thinking that is acted out conversationally in the world as it is a matter of

knowledge and technique applied to the world” (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005, p. 412). This

means that thinking or meaning making happens simultaneously with the action taken on the basis

on that meaning. In other words, sensemaking is the basis of human action. This is precisely why

sensemaking is such an important body of literature in organisation studies - it contends that how

we make sense of an environment determines the way we act in it.

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Figure 1 - Weick’s sensemaking process (Weick 1995, Herrmann 2007).

Figure 1 shows Weick’s model of sensemaking processes, which I now describe in detail

using an everyday organisational scenario - a work meeting. Weick’s sensemaking process model

has three main components: enactment, selection, and retention. The first step of sensemaking,

enactment, is an activity undertaken by a person to bracket, frame, and label an aspect of reality

(Herrmann 2007, p. 18). Here the person, from an originating state of flow, “carves out” (Weick

1995, p. 33) an aspect of their reality and assigns it a meaning. For example, when participating in a

team meeting a worker may subliminally interpret much of the conversation, that is, they are in a

state of flow. However, when something of interest or confusion arises the worker pays attention to

that phrase; they enact this phrase by bracketing, framing, and labelling it, that is, noticing,

capturing, and assigning meaning to it.

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Individual sensemaking processes

Collective sensemaking

processes

EnactmentIndividual brackets a

message and assigns

importance to an event

Bracket - Frame - Label

SelectionGroup selects communication cycles in

order to further make sense of the

event

RetentionSelected

communication cycle is

retained by the group as

an organisationa

l rule

Communication cycle

Act - Respond - Adjust

Context

The second step, selection, is a process of communication between individuals to clarify or

reduce equivocality (multiplicity of meaning) of the interruption or event. Here the team undertakes

a communication cycle of acting, responding, and adjusting to achieve a consensus of meaning. For

example, the worker discusses with other team members what they make of the point raised. The

third step, retention, describes how the team’s interpretation of the event and consequent actions

reinforce the shared meaning, that is, the team reaches agreement on the meaning of the phrase and

the action to be taken. This entire process is called a sensemaking episode.

Weick outlines seven concepts that underpin his sensemaking model (Weick 1995; Weick,

Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005). Each is now briefly described in relation to the example of the team

meeting. Firstly, sensemaking is grounded in identity construction - “who we think we are as

organisational actors shapes what we enact and how we interpret” (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld

2005, p. 416). This means that the worker’s identity or role (for example ‘team leader’ or ‘expert’)

determines what they find interesting or confusing in the meeting, that is, what they enact.

Secondly, sensemaking is retrospective - “people can know what they are doing only after they

have done it” (Weick 1995, p. 24). This means that when the worker notices a phrase the phrase is

already in the past when they attempt to make sense of it. Thirdly, sensemaking is enactive of

sensible environments, that is, the worker can only make sense of a phrase that is in the realm of

their understanding. Fourthly, sensemaking is social - “conduct is contingent on the conduct of

others, whether they be real or imagined” (Weick 1995, p. 39). This means that the worker’s

understanding of the phrase is informed by how the other people in the meeting make sense of and

act on that phrase.

Weick’s fifth concept is that sensemaking is ongoing - sensemaking is something people do

all the time. Even when idly listening to the meeting’s proceedings, sensemaking on the part of the

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worker is always in progress. The sixth concept is that sensemaking is focussed on and by extracted

cues – “extracted cues are simple, familiar structures that are seeds from which people develop a

larger sense of what may be occurring” (Weick 1995, p. 50). In the meeting scenario the worker

uses information from the external environment, for example, the ambience of the meeting room,

the cultural climate of the organisation, or the manner of other participants, to try to make sense of

the phrase at hand. Finally, sensemaking is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy -

“sensemaking is not about truth and getting it right … it is about continued redrafting of an

emerging story so that it becomes more comprehensive” (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005, p.

415). Here the team members do not necessarily need all the information to make sense of the

phrase, they just need enough information to make an assumption about it and move forward.

With a thorough understanding of Weick’s real world sensemaking model and its central

concepts I now turn to my investigation of sensemaking processes in virtual environments. At this

point I deliberately abandon Weick’s model and take my point of departure from the virtual

environment itself. In the next section I describe how virtual environments are generally

conceptualised in existing literature and locate my study within this conceptual framework. Later I

describe in detail the context of my study, a virtual conference called ‘Sustainability Virtual

Summits – SmartICT’, which was a three day virtual event run in different time zones to

accommodate participants throughout the world. Then, after I report my findings on sensemaking

processes in this virtual conference, I revisit Weick’s real world theory and compare it to my

findings.

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4. A virtual conference: the context of the study

As stated above, the context of my study is a virtual conference. Virtual conferences are

modelled on real life conferences, aiming to mimic them in the virtual environment. In a virtual

conference, as in a real one, participants watch speeches, network with other delegates, and chat

with exhibitors. Moreover, the website interfaces for virtual conferences are designed to mimic the

look and layout of a real world conference site. However, the delivery of the virtual conference, that

is the way that conference activities occur, is vastly different to what most conference delegates are

used to. In a virtual conference all interaction is mediated by technologies such as video, audio, and

text chat. Herein lies the essential difference between virtual and real environments – interactions

and experiences in the virtual world are mediated or ‘filtered’, whereas the real world hosts ‘pure’,

face-to-face interactions between people and unmediated physical contact between a person and

their world.

Virtual conferences are just one type of virtual environment in a wide spectrum of available

technologies. While virtual environments vary greatly in their technical capabilities, a common

feature is that they are usually hosted on the internet. For example Wikispaces (2010), an internet

collaboration tool which offers people text forums and centralised document storage, is far less

advanced than Second Life (2010), a virtual reality website in which people can create and embody

three-dimensional avatars (digital forms representing human bodies in the virtual world). While

virtual conferencing is a very recent technology it may be described as middle of the range in terms

of sophistication - while not offering participants a three-dimensional presence, virtual conferencing

does enable interaction between participants in real time via text chat.

The broader context of this study is the internet at large. Since the internet became

commonplace in most organisations scholars have sought to uncover and explain its impact on and

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role in organisations. Traditionally, the internet has been conceptualised as a communication tool -

a means of interacting over physical distance. When the internet is conteptualised as a tool it is

compartmentalised into the various modes of communication it enables. “Interest has ranged from

explicit, informal technologies, like chat and instant messaging, to asynchronous, conversational

communications occurring via email and bulletin board systems” (Churchill, Snowden & Munro

2001 cited in Churchill & Erickson 2003, p. 1). Churchill & Erickson (2003, p. 7) observe that

discussions about the internet as a communication tool “tend to use face-to-face conversation as a

benchmark against which to contrast mediated conversation”. Because of this many authors

discredit technology-mediated communication altogether, a viewed summed up in Pyoria’s (2007,

p. 20) statement:

(There is a) false conception of the utility of IT for enhancing interpersonal interaction by

constructing new communication channels parallel to old ones… An additional problem inherent in

all computer-mediated communication is the lack of immediate face-to-face interaction… Even in

real time virtual conferences combining audio and video, most social clues – arguably the most

efficient form of immediate feedback – will remain absent.

In this excerpt, Pyoria clearly takes the internet as tool view, dismissing mediated

interaction as being inferior to face-to-face interaction. This view can bias scholars towards a

perceived superiority of face-to-face interactions and thus limit their capacity to more deeply

understand virtual organisational behaviour. Indeed, some researchers have challenged the view of

internet as a tool arguing that the internet also provides people with new ways of exploring aspects

of reality and self (Croon Fors & Jakobsson 2002, p. 39). In this alternative view the internet is

conceptualised as a world which people can explore, not just a tool they can use to achieve a task.

As Croon Fors & Jakobsson (2002, p. 39) state, “in contrast to the tool perspective, this view

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regards information technology as an influential mediator and moderator of human experiences”. In

other words, virtual environments enable people to experience life from alternative perspectives,

that is, virtually mediated and moderated perspectives, offering them greater insight into themselves

and their world. This study acknowledges the internet as tool view of the internet but is more

entrenched in the internet as world view; virtual conferences do not just provide a tool for people to

interact with content and each other over distance; virtual conferences themselves are worlds open

to people to explore.

In the twenty-first century, with extensive possibilities for the design and architecture of

virtual environments, each virtual world is distinct with a vast array of experiences available to

people. As such, there is no one accepted definition of virtual environments in the literature. Croon

Fors and Jakobsson (2002, p. 41) offer a “tentative” definition in the face of this ambiguity, stating

that “a virtual world emerges from a distributed technical system that allows a substantial number

of people to interact synchronously. The interaction takes place in a sustained environment based on

some kind of spatial metaphor”. The environment under study here, the virtual conference, fits this

definition. To reiterate my purpose, it is to investigate how people make sense of and act in these

virtual environments (the virtual conference) compared to how people sense of and act in the real

world. Having conceptualised the context of the study I now proceed to my methodology which

was designed to accommodate the unique nature and challenges of the virtual environment

identified above.

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5. Methodology: virtual ethnography

I employed a virtual ethnography methodology to answer my research questions: (1) by

what processes do people make sense of and act in virtual environments? and (2) to what extent

does sensemaking in virtual environments differ from sensemaking in the real world? Virtual

ethnography was a logical approach because sensemaking is an intricate and personal activity that

may be effectively captured through immersion in the virtual environment. The aim of the virtual

ethnography methodology was to conduct an in-depth analysis of the lived experience of a small

cross-section of conference participants, namely my own experience and that of four other

participants. Indeed, a larger collection of experiences may have diluted the results; the very

purpose of ethnography is to explore as deeply as possible the detail of the lived experience of a

few, not to capture as many experiences as possible.

Virtual ethnography is a relatively new methodology that has been pioneered over the last

ten years by scholars such as Christine Hine (2000; 2005) who suggests that this methodology

causes researchers to rethink many aspects of traditional ethnography. In virtual ethnography

“technology should not be seen as a given or taken for granted, because its use and impact are

strongly influenced by the representations and beliefs referring to it on the side of the users and

nonusers” (Hine 2000, p. 263). As such, a significant consideration in virtual ethnography is the

social construction of the internet by people as both cultural artifact and as place of cultural

production (Hine 2000); in other words, internet as thing (tool) or place (world/reality) as discussed

earlier. These conceptions of the internet are now applied to implications for my research

methodology.

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Internet as thing has two main implications for the virtual researcher. Firstly, the researcher

may describe a piece of the internet (such as a website) to make assumptions, for example, about

people who visit that website. Secondly, the internet may be used as a tool to conduct research, such

as hosting a focus group in an online forum. I employed the internet in both these ways during my

research. Therefore, in accordance with the virtual ethnography methodology I ensured that all my

interactions with participants were mediated by virtual technologies (before, during, and after the

conference) to achieve consistency of context across all data collection points. Also, because virtual

interviews are experienced differently to the face-to-face interviews most people are familiar with, I

also modelled my interview manner and questions on Hine’s (2000; 2005) recommendations.

Internet as place is also problematic for researchers of virtual environments because virtual

places cannot be defined in the same way as real places. Ethnographers have traditionally defined

the boundaries of their studies by placing physical parameters on the group under study, but this

cannot be achieved in virtual environments. In virtual environments “boundaries are not assumed a

priori but explored through the course of the ethnography” (Hine 2000, p. 64). In other words, place

is defined by connections (virtual and real) rather than locations. As such, my site of study was not

confined to the conference website but included exploration of what happened before and after the

conference. That is, I partook in communication with conference organisers and participants before

and after the conference and also followed links from the conference website to other parts of the

internet, such as websites of the companies the participants worked for.

Finally, there were ethical considerations in my study unique to the virtual ethnography

methodology. Hine (2000) says that lurking is a key issue. Lurking is defined as being in a virtual

environment unbeknownst to other people in that environment. A participant could have lurked in

the virtual conference by selecting ‘Invisible’ mode or by not participating while watching the

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interactions of other participants unfold. As a virtual ethnographer it would have been unethical for

me to have lurked in the conference by, for example, not revealing my identity or my intentions as a

researcher. As such, I strived to achieve transparency in all my interactions by participating in the

conference using my full name, uploading a true photo of myself, and filling in my profile

information accurately (including a link to more information about my research project and contact

details). I also indicated that I was ‘Available’ for chat at all times from the options provided

(‘Available’, ‘Away’, or ‘Invisible’). While I remained transparent with my own identity I took steps

to ensure that the identities of the research participants remained anonymous; I assigned the

interviewees aliases and ensured all my data was securely stored during the study.

5.1 Participant observation approach

My study followed the basic formula of the more traditional participant observation (Flick

2006) methodology (from which ethnography was derived) but exercised the freedom of

ethnography generally, and virtual ethnography specifically, in collecting a range of data to enhance

my findings. The three steps in my approach were descriptive, focussed, and selective observation

(Flick 2006, p. 220), which I executed one at a time over the three days of the conference. In phase

1, descriptive observation, I described in detail each part of the virtual conference environment - the

Lobby, Auditorium, Meeting Rooms, Exhibit Hall, and company booths. I also noted my own

thoughts and feelings in response to the environment. Having never attended a virtual conference I

‘felt’ my way around, keeping in mind the following questions which were developed based on my

existing understanding of sensemaking: How is interaction organised? What is visible? What is

invisible? What are my assumptions? In phase 2, focussed observation, I attended the conference as

if I were a regular participant, engaging in and capturing text chats with other participants and booth

representatives. I also attended moderated chat sessions in the Auditorium, where questions from

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participants and answers from the key note speakers were managed and published by a silent third

party. Again I took notes on my own observations and experiences with the technology, content,

and other participants. Finally, in phase 3, selective observation, I again engaged in text chats with

other participants and took notes; the aim was to consolidate and challenge my observations from

phase 2.

Over the course of these three phases I collected different types of data including field notes,

artifacts (such as text chat session transcripts and downloadable pdfs), and statistical information

from the conference organisers (such as attendance numbers). Following the conference I also

conducted semi-structured interviews with participants I met during the conference, in which my

intention as an ethnographer was to understand as completely as possible the lived experiences of

these participants.

5.2 Interviews

In the virtual conference I initiated text chat sessions with several participants, four of

whom I emailed after the conference asking if they would agree to be interviewed. I selected my

interviewees using a theoretical sampling method in which “decisions about choosing and putting

together empirical material … are made in the process of collecting and interpreting data” (Flick

2006, p. 125). This approach was appropriate because my research evolved as I collected my data; it

was not possible to identify at the beginning of the study which people or what data I needed to

access. The end sample of interviewees consisted of participants from all three time zones as well as

a mix of sex, age, occupation, and level of competence with virtual technology (see Table 1).

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Table 1 - Interviewee demographics

Interviewee Sex Approx. age Virtual competence

Location Occupation

Jo Female 35 Low New Zealand Masters student

Chuck Male 40 High USA Entrepreneur/consultant

Ted Male 60 Medium Portugal Software company owner

Max Male 55 Medium USA Sustainability expert/speaker

The interviews, conducted over Skype via audio communication, adhered to Flick’s (2006,

p. 257) guidelines for online interviews. Virtual interviews have obvious downfalls such as

technical difficulties and less intimate contact (Flick 2006). However, the choice to employ virtual

interviews was justified because the interviews engaged the participants in the natural context of the

research – the virtual environment. Furthermore, I wrote the interview questions following

Spradely’s 1979 (cited in Flick 2006, p. 166) guidelines for ethnographic interviews, taking care to

ensure that the interviews were a genuine dialogue. The interview questions were: How did you

experience participating in the conference? What was distinctive about the virtual environment in

your interactions with people, content, and tools? What did you find particularly challenging and/or

surprising about participating in the conference virtually? How do you think the virtual conference

can be improved so that interaction and communication work better between participants? The aim

of these questions was to uncover the interviewees’ lived experience of the conference and elicit the

intricate details of their interactions with the technology, content, and other participants.

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5.3 Data analysis

To analyse my data I employed theoretical coding, a procedure for analysing data to

develop a theory in which “interpretation is the anchoring point for making decisions about which

data or cases to integrate next in the analysis” (Flick 2006, p. 296). This theoretical coding, which

was consistent with my theoretical sampling approach, followed three steps: open coding, axial

coding, and selective coding (Flick 2006). As shown in Table 2, I applied these steps to two streams

of analysis: mapping participants’ sensemaking episodes in the virtual conference and identifying

unique facets of the virtual environment that influenced participants’ sensemaking processes.

Table 2 – Data analysis process

Stream 1:Mapping sensemaking processes in the virtual conference

Stream 2: Identifying facets of the virtual environment that influence sensemaking processes in the virtual conference

Open coding

Analysed field notes and other data to identify my own thoughts and actions that impacted my sensemaking processes.

Analysed field notes and related data to establish four key themes for consideration.

Axial coding

Sketched out the sensemaking journeys of each participant, as evidenced in the interview transcripts and supporting data.

Combined interview data with my own observations to refine themes to eight unique facets of the virtual environment.

Selective coding

Established model of sensemaking processes in the virtual conference.

Established the three strongest unique facets of the virtual environment, which underpin my model of sensemaking in the virtual conference.

Combined findings

Established a phenomenon that is unique to sensemaking in the virtual environment and challenged some of Weick’s central concepts.

Firstly, using open coding, a method that “aims at expressing data and phenomena in the

form of concepts” (Flick 2006, p. 297), I conducted a preliminary analysis of my data to identify

general themes in both streams of analysis. In stream 1 I identified some of my own thought

processes and actions that were part of my sensemaking processes, such as considering how to

move between rooms in the conference. In stream 2 I identified four broad themes (virtual time,

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virtual place, virtual space, and virtual presence) which were aspects of the virtual environment that

seemed to impact my sensemaking activities.

I then proceeded to axial coding which aims to “refine and differentiate the categories

resulting from open coding” (Flick 2006, p. 301). In stream 1 I identified and mapped the specific

sensemaking episodes of each interviewee as well as my own. In stream 2 I combined the analysis

of the interview transcripts with the four themes that were identified in the previous step and

decided which were the most promising for further exploration. Through numerous rounds of

establishing relationships between the themes and their sub-themes, and between my own data and

that of the interviews, eight pertinent aspects of the virtual environment emerged: virtual

etiquette/norms, power in a virtual environment, virtual time, expectations of the virtual conference,

virtual engagement and presence, technical confidence and competence, attitude/approach to the

conference, and lack of available social cues in the virtual environment.

Thirdly, selective coding involved a higher level of abstraction, combining all the identified

sensemaking episodes to arrive at a unified model of sensemaking processes in the virtual

conference (stream 1), as well as three well-supported facets of the virtual environment that affected

participants’ sensemaking activities. Finally, I combined all my findings to establish a new

phenomenon unique to the virtual environment, which is discussed later.

5.4 Validity and reliability

Sandberg (2005) developed a four-pillared framework for guiding interpretive research

which I used to achieve validity and reliability in my study. Firstly, communicative validity

(establishing a community of interpretation between researcher and participant to justify coherence

of interpretation of the topic) was established in two ways. Instead of imposing my understanding

of the conference upon the interviewees I asked open ended questions and engaged them in

22

dialogue, which encouraged a joint understanding of the topic. I also prefaced each interview by

stating that my intent was to grasp the participants’ own lived experience of the conference, which

again opened up the dialogue and encouraged honesty from both parties. Secondly, pragmatic

validity (recognising inconsistencies between what people do and what people say they do) was

established through the use of follow-up questions to qualify the interviewees’ statements. Using

triangulation I resolved inconsistencies in the data by comparing the interview transcripts, text chats

I held with the interviewees during the conference, and my field notes.

Thirdly, transgressive validity (recognition of ambiguity, complexity, and multiplicity of

meaning) was achieved by actively looking for contradictions in my data, not just coherence. For

example, in the second stream of analysis I cross-checked my and the interviewees’ understandings

of the unique facets of the virtual conference that seemed to affect sensemaking processes. Finally,

reliability as interpretive awareness (validating the process by which truthful interpretations are

made by demonstrating how interpretations have been controlled and checked throughout the

research) was achieved by acknowledging and managing my subjectivity throughout the research

process. I did this, as Sandberg (2005) suggests, by posing ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions, as opposed

to ‘why’ questions in all aspects of my research. I also employed a describing orientation in relation

to my data collection and analysis; I described what constituted the participants’ lived experience of

the virtual conference, rather than seeking to explain why participants experienced the conference

in the ways they did, which reduced the risk of my subjectivity influencing the results.

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6. Results: sensemaking in the virtual conference

The results of my study take in various aspects of how people made sense of and acted in

the virtual conference. Firstly, I describe the virtual environment in detail from both the thing and

place conceptual perspectives. Secondly, I describe the model of sensemaking processes I

developed specific to the virtual conference, using my own and the other participants’ sensemaking

episodes to illustrate the model. Thirdly, I discuss the two main types of sensemaking episodes that

are evident in the model of sensemaking in the virtual environment: technical and interpersonal

sensemaking. I then compare the new model to Weick’s real world sensemaking model, revealing a

number of significant differences between them. Finally, I identify some facets of the virtual

conference environment that support my concept of introspective sensemaking, which I argue is a

new phenomenon unique to sensemaking in virtual environments.

6.1 Detailed description of the context

From an internet as place perspective the context of the study was a website that hosted a

virtual conference series called Sustainability Virtual Summits (2010). I attended the first of three

events - ‘SmartICT’ - which focussed on sustainability for global ICT organisations. Participants

from around the world visited the conference website over three consecutive day-long sessions in

different time zones: UK/Europe (London), US (Denver), and Asia/Pacific (Hong Kong), held on

March 30, 31, and April 1 2010 respectively. The virtual conference environment, an internet-based

virtual world that aims to mimic a real conference environment, was developed by a company

called 6Connex (2010). The three-dimensional graphics on each page of the conference website

depicted the various ‘rooms’ in which specific activities took place; for example in the Auditorium

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there were key note speakers and in the Exhibit Hall there were booths with representatives

available to ‘talk’ to participants about company products and services.

From the internet as tool perspective the communication tools made available by the

6Connex technology were video with audio, text chat, digital content download (such as pdfs) and

other tools such as vCards (see Screenshot 2), General Message pop-ups (see Screenshot 3, and the

Roster view (see Screenshot 4). Many of these functions were one-way channels, such as the key

note speeches which were delivered via pre-recorded video. Two-way interaction was only possible

via two text tools. Firstly, there was a public, moderated chat in the Auditorium where participants

could submit questions to be answered by the speaker in the video. These moderated chat sessions

were asynchronous; the questions were submitted and read by a moderator who, after passing them

on to the speaker for an answer, posted the question together with the answer for public viewing.

Secondly, one-on-one or group chat sessions between participants provided two-way, synchronous

(or near-synchronous) interaction. Here participants could invite other people to chat, for example,

about the video showing in the Auditorium (one-on-one chats were far more popular than group

chats). The four screenshots below show how the conference environment appeared on the screen to

the participant.

25

Screenshot 1 – Lobby (Sustainability Virtual Summits 2010)

Screenshot 2 – vCard exchange in one-on-one chat session (Sustainability Virtual Summits 2010)

26

Screenshot 3 – Roster view of conference participants (Sustainability Virtual Summits 2010)

Screenshot 4 – General Message pop-up (Sustainability Virtual Summits 2010)

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6.2 My first virtual sensemaking episode

As described in my participant observation approach to the virtual ethnography

methodology, I attended the virtual conference over three days. I found that the virtual conference

activities were generally familiar to me from my previous experience of real conferences; activities

such as listening to key note speakers, networking with delegates, obtaining information, chatting to

exhibitors, and exchanging business cards. The virtual environment did, however, introduce new

variables that affected how I carried out these activities. For example, virtual business cards or

vCards were exchanged by clicking a ‘Request vCard’ or ‘Send vCard’ button in the text chat

window. Despite my reasonably high level of experience with virtual technologies, this conference

was the first time I had ever exchanged a vCard. When I was sent a vCard in a conversation with

Chuck (see below) I became confused – a sensemaking event occurred for me and I entered a

sensemaking episode. The italicised text below represents my thoughts; normal text is the actual

conversation.

CHUCK: I went to a conference in Second Life recently … Okay to ask for your vCard?

AMBER: A Second Life summit sounds interesting!

What is a vCard?

CHUCK: (This person has sent you a vCard: Please make sure it was not blocked by your Pop-Up

Blocker.)

I have no idea what this means. But I don’t want to ask because you will think I don’t know what I’m

doing… That won’t look good for me!

CHUCK: I can fill you in about it when we get a chance to chat. I was quite impressed.

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Oh, you are talking about Second Life, not the vCard. Ok, so how do I find the vCard you sent me ...

Oh, right, it’s been automatically downloaded to my desktop.

AMBER: Thanks Chuck.

Now, how do I send my vCard to Chuck? Oh, look, there’s a button that says ‘Send vCard’. That’s it.

CHUCK: I did get your vCard.

AMBER: Great - I got yours too.

To explain this sensemaking episode, prior to this event I was in a state of flow; I was

confidently participating in a text chat session with Chuck. However, Chuck’s request for my vCard

challenged my existing knowledge and I dared not ask him what he meant for fear of appearing

incompetent. Moreover, there were no cues immediately available to me about what was happening,

that is, no instructions or visible demonstration of what to do. Using trial and error I tried to both

send and receive a vCard which involved clicking buttons and determining where on my computer

desktop the vCard file has been saved. When the episode was resolved Chuck and I continued our

conversation and I returned to a state of flow. This is an example of just one sensemaking episode

that occurred in the virtual conference.

6.3 Sensemaking processes in the virtual conference

Each participant experienced unique sensemaking episodes, some of which I was able to

capture in text chat sessions during the conference and in the interviews after the conference. The

participants, including me, varied in their level of competence with the virtual technology and this

seemed to determine the point at which each participant experienced their first sensemaking event.

Indeed, “efforts at sensemaking tend(ed) to occur when the current state of the world (was)

perceived to be different from the expected state of the world, or when there (was) no obvious way

29

to engage the (virtual) world” (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005, p. 409). I used these sensemaking

episodes to map each interviewee’s individual sensemaking processes, synethesising them to

produce Figure 2 which shows the process of sensemaking in the virtual conference as experienced

and reported by the four interviewees.

Figure 2 – Sensemaking processes in the virtual environment (virtual conference).

The model can be explained as follows. Each participant began their sensemaking

experiences in a state of flow. When they encountered something unfamiliar, surprising, or

challenging, they experienced a sensemaking interruption or event and sought information or cues

to help solve the interruption, that is, to make sense of the event. If enough information or cues

were available for the participant to act, they were able to move on and return to a state flow. If

30

Flow

Virtual conferenc

e

Seek out more information/c

ues

Interruption unresolved

Introspective sensemaking

Act

Was feedback received?

Is there enough information/cues

to get by?

NoYes

Yes

No

Interruption/event

there was not enough information for the participant to act, which was often the case, the participant

either sought further information or was left to founder in their uncertainty. At this point the

participant looked inwards for answers they could not find externally. If, on the other hand, more

information was sought and received, the participant could again assess whether or not they now

had enough information to act and return to flow. If the additional information was again not

adequate the participant remained in the sensemaking episode. Though some interviewees engaged

in multiple sensemaking cycles, all interviewees reached a point where they could not make sense

of the situation at hand based on external cues. This resulted in introspective sensemaking, as

indicated in the diagram, which is explained later.

In her interview Jo revealed an excellent example of a sensemaking episode in the virtual

conference; her sensemaking path is highlighted in green in Figure 2. Jo was a relative novice in the

virtual conference environment. When she entered the conference website she was immediately

confronted and confused. “I had to figure out how to get around, what was going on where,” she

said. Upon entering the conference Lobby (see Screenshot 1) Jo saw “moving people” and

wondered whether they were avatars or illustrations. When I talked to Jo a few weeks after the

conference she still had not completely resolved this interruption to her sensemaking experience. “I

didn’t know if it was real. I didn’t know if those people represented, like were, avatars of real

people… or just kind of art”. Jo expressed that there was no way to tell one way or the other

because there were no external cues available to her. Her inability to access the information she

needed to make sense of the event resulted in introspective sensemaking.

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6.4 Technical and interpersonal sensemaking

Through analysing my own sensemaking experiences and those of the interviewees I

discovered that sensemaking episodes in the virtual conference were prompted by the participants’

inability to (1) engage with technology and (2) access needed interpersonal cues. Technical

sensemaking activities emerged from confusion about how to use the technology, for example, how

to navigate from one conference room to another. These interruptions were generally resolved by

trial and error where the participant sought feedback from the technology itself, not from other

people. For example, Max said that even though it was not “entirely obvious” what would happen

as he navigated through the conference website, he was happy to “click around” and find out.

Generally, however, it was the not lack of technical information that interfered with the

participants’ flow and resolution of interruptions, it was the lack of interpersonal cues. An example

of this was when Jo received a General Message pop-up (see Screenshot 3) about a session starting

in the Auditorium. She found that she could not follow the message to where she was supposed to

go, nor could she follow the example of other people in the conference. In her interview Jo noted

that in a real conference she could have “followed the crowd” and the fact that this was not possible

in the virtual conference inhibited her ability to make sense of and act in the conference. In this

way, interpersonal sensemaking refers to interruptions or events that can only be resolved by

learning what one needs to know from interaction with other people, not the technology.

Ted’s experience with one-on-one text chat further exemplifies this definition of

interpersonal sensemaking and the difficulty participants experienced with it in the virtual

environment. Ted described himself as “middle of the bunch” in terms of his technical capability

and confidence in the virtual conference. Ted was impressed with the ease with which he could

access and interact with content. However, he found that interacting with people was more difficult 32

– he said that his real world interpersonal skills did not translate well to the virtual environment.

While Ted did not initiate any conversations he “didn’t hesitate” to engage when I contacted him

via chat and, in effect, showed him what to do. Here, Ted’s sensemaking event was his reluctance to

initiate virtual interactions; though he was not bound by his technical competence (he did know

how to chat via text) he needed interpersonal cues in order to move through the sensemaking

episode. Ted said, “It’s like anything the first time… It’s always easier when someone reaches out

to you”.

This reluctance to initiate interaction was true for a number of participants and, as such,

relatively few chat sessions were initiated during the conference (only 400 chat sessions in total

took place amongst the 1000 delegates over three days). Furthermore, when communication

between participants in the virtual conference did happen, it tended to be content-based, as

demonstrated in the following text chat I had with Jo in a Meeting Room session called ‘Open

Innovation’. It represents a typical example of the conversations I engaged in during the conference.

JO: Have you come across anything interesting?

AMBER: I think the telepresence stuff is interesting. I like the idea of increasing productivity and

lessening cost/travel. What brought you here?

JO: I am interested in IT application for process development, hence energy reduction. Some have

mentioned IT moving into improving efficiency in business operations, but nothing more than a

mention.

AMBER: Is that what you came to find out?

JO: Yes, I am looking for the elusive Green IT 2.0, but not getting much traction.

AMBER: No wonder you are in the Open Innovation session.

33

Further, the moderated chat sessions in the Auditorium were even more confined to content-based

conversation, as demonstrated in the following excerpt.

MODERATOR: In answer to question “how live is live?”, from Anna B.

“It is filmed through two telepresence rooms”.

MODERATOR: In answer to question “Can you tell us how your company uses its own solutions to

reduce its carbon footprint”?, from Harry J.

“Sure, we are a big user of TP rooms … We also push quite strongly on server consolidation and

virtualisation. We have saved up to 28GWh of electricity in 2009 and most of our company vehicles

use less than 130g of CO2 per km”.

MODERATOR: In answer to question “Thanks” from Harry J. [sic]

Max summarised the focus on content and the difficulties with interpersonal interaction in

the conference when he said “normally if you’re at a conference, there will be the face-to-face

visual contact, which is obviously quite important for creating any relationship. Whereas here it’s a,

how should I put it, factual relationship as opposed to an emotional one”. As a result of this focus

on content, participants seeking deeper connections with their counterparts took their conversations

to a more familiar medium, such as telephone or email, once initial contact was made via text chat.

As Chuck said “I would try to move to from a text-based platform to at least a verbal one (because)

I actually think that it is extremely difficult to handle anything complex in chat-based discussions”.

In summary, sensemaking events were brought on by participants’ unfamiliarity with the

conference technology (technical sensemaking), but more significantly by their difficulty and

apprehension in engaging with other people in the virtual environment (interpersonal sensemaking).

The technical issues associated with the virtual environment were somewhat predictable to me and

34

the participants; a certain amount of difficulty using the technology, and glitches in the technology

itself, was expected. What was unexpected were the interpersonal difficulties, evidenced by the

participants’ reluctance to use text chat, the distinct content-focus of those chat sessions that did

occur, and desire to move ongoing interaction to other mediums.

6.5 Comparison of Weick’s model and the new model of sensemaking in virtual environments

I have mapped and analysed sensemaking processes in the virtual environment, arguing that

sensemaking episodes occur in two forms, technical and interpersonal, and that the latter poses

more significant barriers to sensemaking processes in the virtual conference. I now turn to a

comparison of Weick’s model to the model of sensemaking in virtual environments I propose, as

depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3 – Comparaison of Weick’s real world model and the new model of sensemaking in virtual environments (virtual conference).

35

Individual sensemaking processes Collective sensemaking processes

EnactmentIndividual brackets a message and

assigns importance to an event

Frame – Bracket – Label

SelectionGroup selects

communication cycles

Retention

of action

Communication cycle

Weick’smodel

New model

One similarity between the models is the way in which events or interruptions mark the

beginning of sensemaking episodes, that is, in both models there is an interruption to a person’s

flow that sets a sensemaking episode into motion. However, this is where the similarities end. The

first significant difference between the models is that the new model does not incorporate Weick’s

second and third phases, selection and retention. The communication cycles in the selection phase

that are central to Weick’s model were rare and ineffective in the virtual conference environment;

instead of partaking in shared meaning making, participants had to ‘work it out’ for themselves.

Even when information and interaction was outwardly sought by the participations the

communication cycles that resulted tended to be content-focused; participants communicated with

each other about content but were reluctant to move into deeper conversation to confirm or deny

their understandings about the environment. The second significant difference between the models

is that their conceptual foundations differ. As stated earlier, Weick contends that there are seven

central concepts of sensemaking. Three of these concepts come into question when Weick’s model

is compared to the virtual model, these being that sensemaking is inherently social, focused on and

by extracted cues, and retrospective.

Challenge 1: Sensemaking is social

Weick (1995, p. 39) states that sensemaking is social in that “conduct is contingent on the

conduct of others, whether they be imagined or physically present”. In the virtual environment the

participants were not physically present and therefore, because it was not possible to see what

others were doing, could not model their own conduct on the conduct of others. So then, is Weick’s

concept of an imagined other plausible in the virtual environment? I argue that the participants in

the conference were hampered, not just in their inability to model their own actions on others’

behaviour, but in their ability to conjure images of other participants. Because they could not see or

36

hear the people with which they were interacting (interpersonal interaction was limited to text chat),

information about other people’s identities was restricted to information in their conference profile:

name, role, organisation, and sometimes a profile picture. All of the other social cues that help

someone to conjure a sense of another person, such as body language and tone of voice, were absent

in the virtual conference.

An example of how this lack of physical presence interfered with sensemaking processes in

the virtual conference was Max’s experience with unreturned text chat messages. Because he could

not see the other participant and therefore was unable to gauge what was happening based on their

conduct, he searched inwardly for answers.

MAX: I think you can assume that it (the chat message) has gone in and people look at it and say

‘yes’ or ‘no’ … There were a few people who didn’t respond but that might have been because they

were no longer there …

AMBER: So, when people didn’t get back to you, what was your assumption?

MAX: I suppose I’ve learnt not to make assumptions …

AMBER: You said before that you might just think they’re not there …

MAX: You don’t know, therefore, we won’t make assumptions. I think it would be very easy to

make the wrong assumptions, therefore, don’t make it.

Furthermore, Max provided an example of how the other was conjured in the participant’s own

image in the virtual conference. In the interview Max and I discussed the intentions of other

participants and whether he thought other people were genuine and transparent in their dealings

with him. Max, who had not stopped to contemplate his assumptions about the other participants

prior to the interview, said “it does feel that most people are pretty genuine about what they are

37

saying and what they are doing. Maybe I’m a bit naive, but that’s the way it feels”. In this case

Max conjured the other in his own image (as an honest and genuine participant) without

questioning his understanding or looking outside himself for an alternative, and perhaps more

accurate, conception of the other.

In summary, sensemaking in the virtual environment was not social because conduct was

not contingent on the behaviour of others, real or imagined. Participants’ ability to make plausible

sense of the situation and act appropriately was inhibited by the lack of visual and social cues

available to them in the conference.

Challenge 2: Sensemaking is focused on and by extracted cues

Another of Weick’s seven central concepts is that sensemaking is focused on and by

extracted cues, that is, people extract simple, familiar cues from the external environment to make

sense of the situation at hand (Weick 1995). Because those external cues (interpersonal, visual,

social, cultural) were difficult to obtain from the conference, participants looked inwards to find

ways to make sense of and act in the virtual environment. Put another way, sensemaking in the

virtual environment was not dependent on extracted cues because those cues were simply not

available to be extracted. This was demonstrated in the following excerpt from my interview with

Chuck.

My assumption was … that when I walked into a booth then eventually I would be approached… It

could be that they (booth representatives) didn’t know what do to. It could be that … I was already

on my way out the door when they were just barely realising I was there … Suppose the booths were

really busy and I was trying to ask somebody a question, they might have had a real hard time

juggling. So to me it would look like they were ignoring me, when in fact they were just occupied.

38

While Chuck drew on his previous experience of real conferences to form his initial expectations of

the booth representatives, he made sense of their non-communication with him based on his own

imaginings of what was occurring, not on extracted cues from the external environment.

Sensemaking in both real and virtual environments involves participants imposing their own

meaning onto the situation; the difference here is that, in the virtual environment, participants made

sense of the event in isolation from the environment in which it occurred.

Chuck’s inward-looking sensemaking was further evidenced by his general approach to

interactions with other people in the virtual conference. Chuck believed that, because of the absence

of external cues and therefore lack of shared context or cultural benchmark from which to operate,

people brought their personal values with them into the virtual conference. He further observed that

he could not know who held which values. In the face of this ambiguity Chuck said, “if I don’t have

a context, I will try to find what I consider to be the least aggressive stance.” In this way Chuck

referenced his own values to establish what he thought was appropriate and projected them onto the

context and the people he was engaging. Moreover, with minimal opportunity to test if his approach

was understood or accepted by the other participants (he made sense of the situation in isolation

from the context) Chuck operated from his own frame of reference for the duration of the

interaction. In this way, sensemaking was not focused on and by extracted cues, instead, cues were

inwardly sought.

Challenge 3: Sensemaking is retrospective

A central premise of Weick’s sensemaking model is that “people can know what they are

doing only after they have done it” (Weick 1995, p. 24). Put differently, “we are conscious always

of what we have done, never of doing it” (Shultz 1956 cited in Weick 1995, p. 24). These

statements mean that when attention is paid to an event that has already occurred, sensemaking is 39

backward-looking. This line of argument is logical, however, the concept that sensemaking is

retrospective did not hold true in the virtual conference environment.

Retrospective noticing, bracketing and labelling - the building blocks of enactment - did not

occur in Weickian fashion in the virtual conference. Instead, the evidence suggests that

sensemaking was experienced by the participants in situ in the confusion of the moment(s). One

pertinent example of this was when Jo entered the virtual conference and was confronted with

several elements that did not make sense to her. Further, she struggled to articulate exactly what it

was that didn’t make sense. Jo said, “I expected to be able to get there and understand what I was

doing, but I couldn’t”. Chuck seemed equally confused and unable to articulate what was ‘wrong’

when he entered the virtual conference. He said “I didn’t know how it was going to work, I didn’t

know what they (other participants and booth representatives) were going to do, I didn’t know if I

was going to go in and click a button or be, um, approached by an individual or whatever, but, ah, I

thought something like that would happen and none of that happened”. In this way, Jo and Chuck

could not and did not “carve out” (Weick 1995, p. 33) aspects of reality to try to make sense of the

world. Unable to bracket, frame, or label their sensemaking events, these participants’ experiences

of sensemaking were in the present, not in reference to the past as Weick contends in his concept of

retrospective sensemaking.

In summary, my model of sensemaking in virtual environments has challenged three of

Weick’s seven central concepts. Firstly, I argue that sensemaking in the virtual conference was not

social because participants could not model their own conduct on the conduct of others (real or

imagined). Secondly, I argue that sensemaking in the virtual conference was not focused on and by

extracted cues because those simple, familiar structures (be they interpersonal, social, or cultural)

were unavailable to participants. Thirdly, I argue that in the virtual conference sensemaking was not

40

necessarily retrospective because participants were not able to bracket, frame, and label events in

Weickian fashion; instead participants experienced their sensemaking episodes in situ. Through

these challenges I contend that sensemaking processes in the virtual conference were self-referential

and largely independent of the context in which the sensemaking episodes occurred. I term this

phenomenon introspective sensemaking.

6.6 Introspective sensemaking

The new phenomenon of introspective sensemaking is the culmination of the findings so far.

Introspective sensemaking is characterised by participants’ (1) inability to access external cues (be

they technical, interpersonal, visual, social, or cultural) and (2) tendency to look inwards to find

answers to questions, even if they have the option and ability to reach out for external cues to help

them make sense of and act in the virtual environment.

Firstly, as discussed extensively above, the virtual conference environment was not

forthcoming with external cues to feed into the participants’ sensemaking processes. As Chuck said,

“you were thrown in the deep end and told to swim”. Secondly, and more importantly, the

interviewees were unanimously reluctant to approach people in the conference even if they needed

help and were experienced with the tools with which to get that help. This tendency may be

explained in part by the following. When questioned about the lack of cues (such as social prompts

and catalysts for interaction) provided by the technology and conference organisers, most

interviewees were not critical of the conference for not providing these cues. Instead they criticised

themselves, suggesting that they could have better prepared themselves for the conference by

contacting other participants and familiarising themselves with the technology before the

conference started. As Ted said, “I view my (lack of engagement) as a function of my lack of

initiative more than anything else”. This was a sentiment shared by all four interviewees, further

41

evidencing the inward-looking tendencies of participants when making sense of the virtual

environment, that is, introspective sensemaking.

It is clear that Weick’s model of sensemaking did not entirely hold true in the virtual

conference. Not only did the sensemaking models (Weick’s and my own) differ significantly, some

of the key premises that underpin Weick’s theory have been brought into question in relation to

virtual environments. Also, a new phenomenon, introspective sensemaking, has emerged. Now

follows a discussion of some unique facets of the virtual conference that underpin these findings.

6.7 Facets of the virtual conference that support introspective sensemaking

During my research I identified some unique facets of the virtual environment that make it

distinct from the real world. Upon final analysis, three of the initial eight identified facets

(mentioned in my data analysis) emerged as being prevalent and support the findings explained

above.

1. Partial presence

The experience of being present in the virtual conference was distinctly different to being

present at a real conference. Firstly, participants were simultaneously in the virtual environment (in

the conference website) and in the real word (sitting at a computer) at the same time. The

implication of this was that it was not possible for participants to be 100% present in the

conference; they could not leave their physical bodies behind in order to be fully immersed in the

virtual world. Participants were semi-engaged in the conference, completing tasks in the real and

virtual world at the same time, for example taking phones calls while watching a conference video.

As Max said, attending the conference “was part of a portfolio of things I was doing that day”.

42

In terms of how the presence of another person was perceived in the virtual conference, a

participant could only gauge if the other person was ‘there’ based on the other person’s status in the

Roster view (see Screenshot 4). However, the other person’s presence was confirmed only when the

other person actually did something, for example, responded to a text chat message. Put another

way, participants had to act in a way that was visible in order to be seen by other participants. As

such, if a participant was not acting they were, in fact, absent, even if their status said they were

‘Available’. This active presence was the only kind of presence possible in the virtual conference,

and this was a point of discussion in the interviews. For example, Chuck stated that attempting to

clarify a point in the virtual environment required numerous rounds of questioning, which could

come across as interrogation. Chuck’s point was reiterated by Max who said that text chat

“certainly brings about the fact that you have to be more concise”.

The implication of partial presence for sensemaking in the virtual conference was that

breakdowns in communication cycles were common. In the virtual conference, true presence was

momentary at best and this undermined the shared sensemaking processes of participants; that is,

there was limited capacity to sustain a collective sensemaking episode between them. Even if two

participants in a conference room perceived that they themselves were present in the conference,

they may have perceived the other to be absent. This perceived absence of others led participants to

introspective sensemaking.

2. Disembodiment

In the real world physical cues are often subconscious and communicated without the

participants’ knowledge. “Our embodied concerns so pervade our world that we don’t notice the

way our body enables us to make sense of it” (Drefus 2001, p. 19). In the virtual conference,

participants were disembodied, that is, divorced from their physical selves and could not 43

communicate or perceive meaning, subliminally or explicitly, with their voice, eyes or hands. To

compensate for this disembodiment participants had to act in overt and direct ways to get the

attention of and communicate with others, a point which is reminiscent of the concept of active

presence described above. Jo observed the overt nature of presence and communication in the

virtual conference that resulted from disembodiment when she said, “in a real room your body

language tells you what you want. You don’t have that online … You have to make an interaction;

it’s a deliberate interaction”.

Unlike in the real, embodied world, immediate nonverbal feedback was absent from the

virtual conference. This resulted in participants acting on unchecked interpretations of aspects of

their reality. For example, Chuck became impatient when he was not approached in the booth by

the company representative (as he would have expected to be in a real conference) and immediately

assumed that the representative was incompetent. As such, his action was to leave the room,

perhaps without giving the representative enough time to register that he was actually in the booth.

As my findings have suggested, Chuck was reluctant to seek out external cues to help confirm or

deny his assumption and did not do so. Instead he relied on introspection to make sense of and act

in the virtual environment, that is, introspective sensemaking.

3. No known etiquette/norms

In a real conference there is an implied set of social norms that people follow - participants

do not speak over the top of the key note speakers, people do not generally leave a presentation

halfway through, and the evening function is the time to approach people and network. In the

virtual conference these rules of engagement were ambiguous or nonexistent. As a result

participants asked themselves questions which, in the real world, would be taken for granted: Is it

ok the leave a room if I’m bored? Can I start a chat with just anyone? How should I approach the 44

speaker if I have a question after their key note speech video? Some participants seemed to carry

their understanding of real world conference etiquette into the virtual context, for example Jo, who

said “I kind of felt like these people were sitting around waiting for someone to talk to and I really

didn’t want to, but I was kinda wondering if it was rude to just ignore them”. Others felt less

accountable to their peers, such as Ted who said that, unlike in a real conference, “I don’t have to

sit by the door at a presentation and then discreetly duck out. You know, I can just click out”.

As demonstrated above there were clear discrepancies between what participants considered

to be acceptable or polite in the virtual conference. Under these conditions participants experienced

uncertainty and ambiguity. This highlights that the subconscious, shared understandings and ‘taken

for granteds’ that people use to maintain flow in real world environments were unreliable in the

virtual conference. With no external cues or known etiquette to rely on, participants could only turn

inward for stability and thus experienced introspective sensemaking.

The three unique aspects of the virtual environment identified above have reinforced the

findings of this study, specifically the phenomenon of introspective sensemaking. Firstly, presence

in the virtual environment was partial. Thus, active presence was the only kind of presence possible

in the virtual conference, which meant that participants perceived others to be largely absent.

Secondly, participants in the virtual conference were disembodied from their physical selves, which

meant that immediate, nonverbal feedback was not available to them, leading to a dependency on

self-reference to make sense of and act in the virtual environment. Finally, there was no known

etiquette or norms apparent in the virtual conference, which also influenced participants to turn

inwards for a social benchmark from which to operate, that is, introspective sensemaking.

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7. Discussion

The aim of this study was to investigate how sensemaking occurs in virtual environments

compared to how sensemaking occurs in the real world. The results of my investigation make a

two-fold contribution to the field of sensemaking.

Contributions

The key contribution of this study to the field of sensemaking is the development of a model

of sensemaking processes in virtual environments, which does not currently exist in the literature,

including a new phenomenon: introspective sensemaking. While a few studies have applied

Weick’s model to the virtual environment mine is the first to examine sensemaking in virtual

environments in and of its own right, and thus to identify key differences between sensemaking

processes in the real and virtual worlds. There are distinct differences between Weick’s real world

sensemaking model and my model of sensemaking in virtual environments, most notably that my

model is confined to the initial enactment phase (it does not incorporate selection and retention).

Further, the processes involved with enactment in the virtual conference differed to those in the real

world sensemaking model. Specifically, framing, bracketing, and labelling of an event in the virtual

conference did not occur according to Weick’s real world model. Instead, sensemaking occurred in

situ as evidenced by participants’ inability to articulate their sensemaking events. I have termed this

type of sensemaking, which is unique to the virtual environment and also new to sensemaking

literature, introspective sensemaking. This phenomenon is characterised by participants’ (1)

inability to access needed information to solve problems and (2) tendency to look inwards to find

answers to questions. Further, the introspective sensemaking phenomenon was found to be

underpinned and supported by three unique facets of the virtual environment identified in the study:

partial presence, disembodiment, and no known etiquette/norms.

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The new model and phenomenon described above have extended and challenged Weick’s

sensemaking theory beyond the traditional bounds of real world environments, hence the second

part of my contribution of this study to the field of sensemaking. In relation to sensemaking in

virtual environments, this study challenges three of Weick’s seven foundational concepts. Firstly,

Weick argues that sensemaking is a social process, but introspective sensemaking is achieved, not

by looking to others, but by constructing the other in one’s own image. Secondly, Weick states that

sensemaking is focused on and by extracted cues from the external environment, but introspective

sensemaking is inward-looking. Finally, Weick argues that sensemaking is retrospective, but

introspective sensemaking is not backward looking; it occurs in the moment, in situ, in isolation

from most external cues. In summary, my results do not dispute Weick’s theory altogether. Rather

they show that Weick’s theory is not entirely valid in the virtual conference environment and reveal

an alternative model of sensemaking specific to virtual environments.

Implications

This study has significant theoretical implications. It opens up a new avenue for

sensemaking research within the spectrum of virtual environments, from the more simplistic to the

highly sophisticated, for example, from Wikispaces to Second Life. Sensemaking in hybrid

environments in which both virtual and face-to-face interaction is the norm may also be studied, for

example, in global organisations where working remotely and teleconferencing as well as face-to-

face meetings are employed. The evidence suggests that when researchers study sensemaking in

virtual environments they cannot take Weick’s theory of sensemaking for granted. In other words,

scholars must assess sensemaking in and of its own right within the context of the particular study.

Moreover, as sensemaking processes that are unique to these contexts are discovered, Weick’s

theory may become less relevant to discussions about sensemaking in virtual environments. Indeed,

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a shift in academic thought from Weick’s sensemaking theory to a new approach to sensemaking in

virtual environments may be required.

The practical implications of this study impact creators, managers, and participants of

virtual environments. Firstly, the difference between sensemaking in virtual environments and

sensemaking in real world environments has practical implications for how people design and

construct virtual environments. For example, the virtual conference in this study was designed and

built on an assumption that providing text chat (and some other tools) would be sufficient to enable

people to interact with each other. In actuality, participants required more than just the option and

means to communicate – they required prompts, catalysts, and demonstrations, both technical and

interpersonal, to be competent and comfortable enough to converse with others. For example,

participants could have been automatically joined into a chat session when they entered a room.

Secondly, management strategies need to be adjusted to accommodate the virtual sensemaker. For

example, the conference organisers could have personally introduced people to each other, leading

by example in demonstrating what was possible and socially acceptable in the virtual conference

environment. This argument may be applied to many aspects of virtual organisation management

such as leadership, motivation, work flow, and decision making.

The theoretical and practical implications of this study suggest that if the impacts of the

three unique facets of virtual environments (partial presence, disembodiment, and no known

etiquette/norms) on sensemaking processes are reduced, participants will be better able to make

sense of and act in the virtual environments. Firstly, if presence could be made less partial and more

consistent, communications cycles may be sustained for longer and the opportunity to gain needed

information and cues from others would be improved. This could be achieved by simple measures

such as automating the ‘Available’ status to turn to ‘Not available’ if the participant is not active for

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five minutes or so. Also, the organisers could educate people about active presence, informing them

that in the virtual environment a participant needs to act in order to be recognised as present by their

peers. As well, telepresence (an advanced type of video conferencing) could be used to enable

people to see and hear the other participants in the conference, enabling participants to

communicate with their bodies instead of with words only.

This point leads to the second facet of virtual environments uncovered in this study,

disembodiment. If participants could have more control over their identities, appearance, and

movement within the virtual environment, they and their counterparts would have more cues to

draw from in order to make sense of and act in the environment. Put another way, individuals could

have a richer sensory experience and their visibility to others may be increased. The ultimate

example of this is employing avatars, which are three-dimensional figures that people can embody

in the virtual world. The use of an avatar interface, as opposed to text chat, could help participants

feel and convey more complex thoughts and emotions in the virtual environment, and thus heighten

their sensemaking experiences. The audio function would also allow participants to speak to each

other in real time, helping them to communicate more effectively and establish shared meaning in a

situation.

Finally, if a set of norms or etiquette was established in the virtual environment then

participants could operate from a shared social or cultural understanding. This understanding could

help to reduce the sensemaking interruptions experienced by participants and help to maintain flow.

To create shared norms and etiquette, organisers could educate participants about what is expected

of them in the virtual conference. Further still, particularly in these early stages of virtual

conference uptake, organisers could acknowledge the ‘elephant in the room’ - that everyone is new

to this technology and most people are somewhat confused. Ted articulated these two points when

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he suggested that organisers could say to participants “hey, this a fundamentally different way to

engage with participants (which) … requires a different skill set and set of tools … To get the most

value, this is what we suggest”. In this way the conference organisers could help facilitate improved

communication and sensemaking processes for participants in the virtual environment.

8. Limitations and further research

There are opportunities for further research based on the foundations I have laid in this

study. Firstly, due to time and resource constraints I could only conduct my study in one virtual

conference. While the Sustainability Virtual Summits – SmartICT was a logical choice that fitted

the definition of a virtual world and provided insight into my topic, there is scope to conduct the

same or similar study in other virtual conferences to extend and strengthen my results. Secondly,

because the virtual conference was just one type of virtual environment among the spectrum

available, my findings should be tested in other virtual environments with ranging technological

capabilities, including hybrid technologies, as discussed earlier. The results could then be compared

to both my findings and Weick’s theory, offering a more comprehensive picture of sensemaking in

virtual environments.

A further research opportunity exists to improve ways of selecting and constructing research

methodologies to account for the unique challenges of virtual environments. For example, virtual

ethnography is a new and relatively under-developed methodology and there is still more to

discover about how adapting real world research methodologies to the virtual world affects the way

in which questions are posed, data is collected, and results are reported.

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9. Conclusion

The aim of this study was to investigate how sensemaking occurs in virtual organisations

compared to how sensemaking occurs in the real world. This study has shown, firstly, that the

process by which people make sense of and act in a virtual conference, a type of virtual

environment, is different to Weick’s real world model of sensemaking and, secondly, that

introspective sensemaking is a phenomenon unique to the virtual environment. Both of these

findings challenge Weick’s theory of sensemaking when applied to virtual environments. The

contribution of this study to the field of sensemaking is two-fold: the development of a model of

sensemaking processes in virtual environments, which are currently not well understood; and the

consequent extension of sensemaking theory beyond the bounds of the real world. The implications

of my findings refer to both theory and practice. Firstly, a new field of sensemaking research is

created which includes the spectrum of virtual and hybrid real/virtual environments. In this new

field scholars must give more consideration to how the virtual environment impacts both the design

and outcomes of their research. Secondly, creators, administrators, and participants of virtual

environments may strive to make the experience of sensemaking easier and richer by altering their

approach to building, managing, and using virtual environments to better accommodate the unique

needs of the virtual sensemaker. In conclusion, though my findings are confined to the virtual

conference environment, they are substantial and deserving of further investigation.

On a more philosophical note, an underlying assumption about sensemaking in virtual

environments which became evident in my study may be questioned - that the richest sensemaking

experiences occur in the most life-like virtual environments. Is making virtual environments more

real the best way to improve sensemaking experiences in these environments? Should the

technology be continually adapted to try to reproduce reality? And will we ever be able to create a

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virtual environment so real that our real world sensemaking processes are fully satisfied? It seems

to me that trying to make the virtual world real is an unachievable task. Instead of modelling the

technology to suit our real world sensemaking tendencies, I believe that we too should adapt our

behaviours to the technology to take advantage of virtual environments. Virtual technologies are

already commonplace in organisations and new technologies will continue to be integrated into

organisational practices. Therefore we should embrace, not try to negate, the unique features of

virtual environments, such as partial presence, disembodiment, and lack of etiquette/norms. Instead

of thinking of sensemaking in virtual environments as being inferior to Weick’s real world,

externally focused sensemaking, let us seek to more fully understand the nature of introspective

sensemaking and leverage its unique features to achieve outcomes not possible in the real world.

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