Projects per year
Abstract
Within the rich literature on volunteering, the topic of volunteer-user interaction and the mechanisms causing or mitigating inequality in this interaction remain understudied. Moreover, knowledge on how digitalization affects voluntary interaction is scarce. Based on a qualitative study of a Danish organization that offers virtual voluntary tutoring, this paper shows how technological and formal aspects of the organizational context may mitigate the risk of volunteers engaging in paternalistic, intimacy-seeking behaviour. First, reliance on information and communications technology (ICT) and managerial logics sustains a bounded form of interaction in which solving a problem is the focal point, while access to personal background information is limited. Second, the organizational design suspends sociability as a criterion for differential treatment of users. Third, anonymous mediated interaction enables temporal and audio-visual asymmetry, allowing users to perform ‘digitally sustained impression management’.
Translated title of the contribution | At undgå nærhed: Et etnografisk studie af velgørende grænser i virtuelt frivilligt socialt arbejde |
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Original language | English |
Journal | VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations |
Volume | 33 |
Issue number | 1 |
Pages (from-to) | 72–82 |
Number of pages | 11 |
ISSN | 0957-8765 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
© International Society for Third-Sector Research 2021.Keywords
- Third-sector organizations
- Virtual Volunteering
- Hybridization
- Information and Communication technologies (ICT)
- Materiality
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Dive into the research topics of 'Avoiding Intimacy: An Ethnographic Study of Beneficent Boundaries in Virtual Voluntary Social Work'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Nye deltagelsesmønstrer og deltagelsesformer blandt unge der laver frivilligt socialt arbejde
Forskning i civilsamfund og frivillighed
01/10/2012 → 01/10/2015
Project: Research