Examples

One of the examples discussed is the use of social networking sites as a model for knowledge creation and dissemination. They discuss the affordances of platforms like facebook such as selecting the circles of audiences for different posts and the ability to receive social and instant feedback on ideas. They explore the possibility of having SNS for scientists specifically, along the lines of Academia.edu or Researchgate where scholars can post their work and the use of question functionality can generate wide discussions. They also discuss the example of Wikipedia. One of the important ways in which the wikipedia model is helpful is that anyone can contribute to a topic and that authorship can also be given to specific parts of a contribution. With the benefit of hindsight, these examples raises questions of what it means when the digital tools for collaborative authorship and publication are often owned by companies with their own policies around monetizing data and privacy clauses, and what categories of analysis should we use to analyze the affordances of these platforms in the present?