Page 252 - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

Kajian Dalam Bidang Ilmu Perpustakaan dan Informasi: Filosofi, Teori, dan Praktik

relationships. Communication through WhatsApp occurs more at the operational
level than the level of research strategy preparation.
Keywords: research, communities of practice, knowledge management, social
informatic
I. BACKGROUND

Research, an activity for finding a scientific solution to solve human
problems, is one of The Three Responsibilities which must be carried out
by lecturers in Indonesia. The Research process is sometimes influenced
by a scientific community environment, the community of practice (Lave
and Wenger, 1999; Brown and Duguid, 2000), and is marked with the
availability of relation among the lecturers which is formed by common
practices and similar experiences. These joint practices and social
relationships require facilities to communicate among its members. One of
the free facilities available is WhatsApp which is widely used by gadget
users because of its ease of use and can be integrated on the laptop used
by most of the lecturers. This study aims to examine how lecturers as the
cyber community or virtual community in Universitas Indonesia (UI)
interpret and utilize WhatsApp as virtual space. Using the concept of Henry
Lefebvre on The Production of Space (Lefebvre in Schmidt) and Marcel
Danesi’s theory of space code (Danesi, 2012), this paper will discuss how
WhatsApp responds to the needs of the lecturers in UI of virtual space that
can be utilized and support research at UI.
Lefebvre states that social relations are formed in and through space,
and that space (public) is the extension of the “common body” within
which society can congregate for various purposes (Danesi, 2012). The
society is Ul researchers who are related to each other and with parties
outside Ul. They utilize WhatsApp in various ways, such as the exchange
of research information, sharing knowledge and research experience. This
study uses the theory of technology appropriation and Grounded Theory
method to understand how communities of practices in the UI interpret and
use WhatsApp. The informants of this research are 3 (three) researchers,
1 (one) lecturer of the Department of Linguistics and 2 (two) lecturers
from the Computer Science. Data collection was obtained through in-
depth interviews and observations. The three lecturers are involved in joint
research with lecturers from other faculties in UI, as well as researchers
outside UI. These joint practices and social relationships require facilities,
one of which is WhatsApp which is a virtual network-based system widely
used since 2009.

232 Whatsaap: Virtual Area as a Comunity Hub For UI Lecturers