With the rapid pace of technological development, individuals are
frequently challenged to make sense of equivocal innovative
technology while being given limited information. Virtual worlds are
a prime example of such an equivocal innovative technology, and this
affords researchers an opportunity to study sense making and the
construction of perspectives about the organizational value of
virtual worlds. This study reports on an analysis of the written
assessments of 59 business professionals who spent an extended
period of time in Second Life, a popular virtual world, and
discursively made sense of the organizational value of virtual
worlds. Through a Toulminian analysis of the claims, grounds, and
warrants used in the texts they generated, we identify 12 common
patterns of sense making and indicate that themes of confirmation,
open-ended rhetoric, demographics, and control are evident in the
different types of claims that were addressed. Further, we assert
that the Toulminian approach we employ is a useful methodology for
the study of sense making and one that is not bound to any
particular theoretical perspective.
Keywords: Virtual worlds, Second Life, sense making,
discourse, argument, Toulmin, organizational value