Off-grid Online : A Mixed-Strategy Survey Study of the Facebook Community ‘Living Off-Grid in Spain’

Abstract: The aim of this study is to explore and understand the motivations for belonging to the Facebook community ‘Living Off-Grid in Spain’ and how collaborative media is used for facilitating off-grid living and societal change. Two main theoretical frameworks are used for analyzing the empirical material of this study. The Uses & Gratifications (U&G) theory is applied to identify the uses and motivations for belonging to the community. And the concept of Community of Practice (CoP) is applied for understanding in what ways the community members use collaborative media to support each other in the practice of planning and executing sustainable off-grid living. The methodological approach contains a voluntary sampling of the population and a mixed-strategy survey for collecting both quantitative and qualitative data about the members and their engagement in the community. The study shows that a new U&G typology is needed for defining the motivations for participating in online communities where collaborative learning is a centerpiece. Additional uses such as Learning, Problem-solving, Inspiration, and Mentoring are proposed for further media studies in this field. And the characteristics of CoP serve to identify the importance that shared practices and mutual engagement have for the success of continuous knowledge exchange in online communities, a field that also would gain value from further media studies.