Backchannel Persistence and Collaborative Meaning-Making

Digital backchannel communication has become an increasingly important area of study for researchers and practitioners in several fields From the emergence of win-enabled Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to contemporary instances of microblogging and SMS messaging, the role of digital backchannels in enabling collaborative affordances has received much recent attention As backchannel communication continues to become more prevalent at professional conferences, in educational curricula, and in organizational settings, robust frameworks for understanding the role of backchannel environments in collaborative meaning-making are needed Drawing upon cultural-historical activity theory and actor network theory, this paper explores the development of backchannel persistence through microblogging platforms, and suggests an approach to studying the collaborative affordances of backchannel communication by focusing on the related concepts of mobilization and recursive writing collaboration