Mathieu O’Neil: Cyberchiefs: Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes (2009)

People are inventing new ways of working together on the internet. Decentralised production thrives on weblogs, wikis and free software projects. In Cyberchiefs, Mathieu O’Neil focuses on the regulations of these working relationships. He examines the transformation of leadership and expertise in online networks, and the emergence of innovative forms of participatory politics.

What are the costs and benefits of alternatives to hierarchical organisation? Using case studies of online projects or ‘tribes’ such as the radical Primitivism archive, the Daily Kos political weblog, the Debian free software project, and Wikipedia, O’Neil shows that leaders must support maximum autonomy for participants, and he analyses the tensions generated by this distribution of authority.

Publisher Pluto Press, 2009
ISBN 0745327974, 9780745327976
242 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2013-3-3)