Sensemaking in an online community after financial loss: Enterprising Jamaican investors and the fall of a financial messiah

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Bourne, Clea D.. 2017. Sensemaking in an online community after financial loss: Enterprising Jamaican investors and the fall of a financial messiah. New Media & Society, 19(6), pp. 843-860. ISSN 1461-4448 [Article]

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Official URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/146144...

Abstract or Description

Online communities are popular sites for collective sensemaking. This study explores sensemaking in one such community following the closure of Olint Corp, a highly successful Jamaican investment club. After Olint’s disbanding, Jamaicans reconnected through online communities to make sense of their financial losses, to make sense of Olint – seen variously as an altruistic endeavour, a global currency trader, or Ponzi scheme – and to make sense of themselves as enterprising investors. This narrative inquiry unveils their rich, multi-voiced, fragmented storying of Olint and its founder, once praised as a ‘financial messiah’.

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Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815621511