THE INTERACTION PATTERNS OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN DESIGN FORUMS

The Interaction Patterns of Knowledge Sharing

in Design Forums

Authors: Chueh-Ting Chang Pei-Hsuan Hsieh - presenter

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Introduction

 Web 2.0 technology

 Professionals and general online users

 Professionals and general online users

 Social network structureof virtual communities

Based on different interactions

Based on the number of the participants/users  Frequency of interactions – Strength of

relationships– Efficiency ofknowledge sharing relationships Efficiency of knowledge sharing (position in the network)

Literature Review (1/2)

 Knowledge sharing in online forums

Q&A discussion boards – knowledge recorded as text

“Search” function

Internal and external motivation: enjoy helping others, express opinions, share experiences, gain rewards…

Roles: moderators, professional commentators, general participants, lurkers

 Social network analysis (SNA)

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“node” is a person or a group of people

“line” is the relationship

Indicators: size, density, centrality (degree, closeness, betweenness)

(Chiu et al., 2005; Dholakia et al., 2004; Guan et al., 2006; Gupta & Kim, 2004; Kim et al., 2011; Linvet et al., 2009; Montero et al., 2007; Xu & Ma, 2006)

Literature Review (2/2)



Size – the number of participants

Density –

Density

the tightness among the participants

The ratio between the actual number of the linkage lines and the greatest number of linkage lines possible

Research Methodology

 Online forums

 3D animation design3 a at o des g

 CGSOCIETY (http://forums.cgsociety.org/)

 Three-month textual data (Feb. 1 to Apr. 30, 2011)

 Based on three units to conduct SNA: a discussion thread, a discussion board, the entire discussion 3D software discussion board

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 UCINET 6

 Procedures: 1) Observation 2) Matrix created 3) Numerical data entered

Results and discussion (1/4)

 Two major discussion boards in CGSOCIETY

 Autodesk Maya (780 discussion threads)  Autodesk 3ds max (819 discussion threads)  250 discussion threads generated monthly

 In total, 1,505 forum members published articles – size  density (0-1): 0.0025

Results and discussion (2/4)

Results and discussion (3/4)

 Autodesk Maya  Autodesk 3ds max

as the network size increases, the degree centrality of

members, in general, declines

 Autodesk Maya  Autodesk 3ds max

the gap of the closeness centrality of members will broadens with the

Results and discussion (4/4)

 Members who initiated discussions represented the highest betweenness centrality within the network

 The betweenness centrality of the remaining network members was less prominent than those members who initiated discussions

 The majority of the members could, perhaps, represent a betweenness centrality of 0, because their

ti i ti i th di i ti iti thi

participations in the discussion activities were nothing but responses to the initiator’s contributions without interaction with other members.

Conclusions

 Network centrality of forum members is subject to the impact of the network’s size.

 The larger the network, the lower the network centrality is for its members

 Initiators’ network centrality is higher - perhaps knowledge expert within the network

 A higher out-degree centrality suggests that the

b hi h d f i d f

member possesses a high degree of expertise and often responds to the postings from others, and consequently, represent the most valuable core members in the forum.