2008/11/08 by Kurt Luther, Amy Bruckman · 5 citations
Computer Science · Social Sciences · Psychology · #Open Source Software Innovations #Wikis in Education and Collaboration #Digital Games and Media #Originality #Computer science #The Internet #Subjectivity #Empirical research #Process (computing) #Peer production #Creativity #Knowledge management #Qualitative research #Public relations #World Wide Web #Sociology #Political science #Psychology #Epistemology #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1145/1460563.1460619
openalex publication_date 2008/11/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Leadership plays a central role in the success of many forms of online creative collaboration, yet little is known about the challenges leaders must manage. In this paper, we report on a qualitative study of leadership in three online communities whose members collaborate over the Internet to create computer-animated movies called "collabs." Our results indicate that most collabs fail. Collab leaders face two major challenges. First, leaders must design collabora-tive projects. Second, leaders must manage artists during the collab production process. We contrast these challenges with the available empirical research on leadership in open-source software and Wikipedia, identifying four themes: originality, completion, subjectivity, and ownership. We conclude with broader implications for online creative col-laboration in its many forms.