Online knowledge community: Conceptual clarification and a cas view for its collective intelligence

Abstract

This paper is a position paper to advocate scholarly attention to the online knowledge communities under a uniform framework. The concept of online knowledge community as suggested in this paper is discussed and compared with related conceptions, especially with community of practice and knowledge-building community. Furthermore, focusing on the collective intelligence of the OKC, a viewpoint of complex-adaptive-systems is taken as a basic paradigm to study OKC. From this view, the collective intelligence of the OKC is generated through the co-evolutionary dynamics of the communal knowledge and the communal social-network system. The paper attempts to establish a notional base for further investigations on actual OKCs. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.