A research Agenda for the study of entropic social structural evolution, functional roles, adhocratic leadership styles, and credibility in online organizations and knowledge markets

Abstract

The new social media enabled by the Internet and the Web have deeply changed the ways in which individuals interact and how knowledge is created and exchanged, which is opening up interesting new research questions for social science. A key question is how the notions of expertise and reputation will evolve as a consequence of the emergence and broad use of social media. Addressing such questions is crucial for many different domains, from traditional academic settings and processes (e.g., promotion procedures), to research funding (e.g., assessing the impact of research results), homeland security and intelligence (e.g., detecting campaigns aiming at spreading deceiving information), and healthcare (determining the source and credibility of health information on the Net).