Associative linking for collaborative thinking: Self-organization of content in online Q&A communities via user-generated links.

ABSTRACT: Virtual collaborative Q&A communities generate shared knowledge through the interaction of people and content. This knowledge is often fragmented, and its value as a collective, collaboratively formed product, is largely overlooked. Inspired by work on individual mental semantic networks, the current study explores the networks formed by user-added associative links as reflecting an aspect of self-organization within the communities' collaborative knowledge sharing. Using eight Q&A topic-centered discussions from the Stack Exchange platform, it investigated how associative links form internal structures within the networks. Network analysis tools were used to derive topological indicator metrics of complex structures from associatively-linked networks. Similar metrics extracted from 1000 s

SUBMITTER: Sher N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10927134 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature