Colliding Norms, Community, and the Place of Online Information: The Case of archive.org

The theory of normative behavior (Burnett, Besant, and Chatman, 2001) examines aspects of information behavior in the context of definable social groupings of people, or "small worlds." Using the concept of "worldview," derived from the theory, this article examines a controversy that erupted in the Live Music Archive (LMA) of archive.org in November 2005 when access to a collection of live concert recordings by the Grateful Dead was limited. It analyzes posts made by representatives of the archive, participants in the forum, and a small handful of statements made by band members and representatives in order to understand the controversy as an instance in which participants shared some elements of a common worldview but, because they understood those elements differently, emerge as three different small worlds.