This is about as bog standard as it gets for academic language in the humanities. For example:

> But neither reading nor lurking are ever passive acts.

These acts are indeed passive, relative to the active counterpart of writing or speaking. A basic academic move is to reframe a concept in a more abstract, generalized, and artificial context, within which you can argue pretty much anything. The more insane and counterintuitive the argument sounds, the more stylish and impactful it's perceived to be. "Understudied" means that no-one has yet marketed this particular flavour combination of intellectual schlock.

They're not actually talking about your lurking practices.