Social networking platform change the way of communication before.
Talking about social networking, I used to physically link this concept with developing relationship with friends and it is popular online due to the widespread use of Facebook and Twitter/Weibo which change the information distribution from 'one-to-one' to 'one-to-many'. Without the Facebook, how could the 'Jasmine Revolution' and the 'Occupy Wall Street' propagate to the rest of the world in a minute.
After taking the course of Social Networking for the first three weeks, I realize the online social networking demonstration is far more than 'talking' or sharing pictures with friends on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other platforms with similar characteristics. It involves the knowledge generation from the interactive and constructive communication that can create more value for the human being.
But how could 'social networking' bring along such a great value? After learning the social and cognition theory, I figure out how it make things happen. Actually, a great amount of online communities like MSDN which group professionals together and provide a social environment for participants to discuss about topics and exchange ideas other than developing social relationship.
How social networking generate knowledge?(e.g. wiki)
The word 'wiki' was first introduced in my internship project experienced in the undergraduate period. Back then, we had no idea of what was the difference between wiki and those traditional forums. We posted the development problems on the internal wiki platform to ask for help and tried to answers others' questions if we could. Now I realize that this is how we learn and get information and even knowledge. After digesting the useful data we gathered, we brainstormed online and shared useful tips to others. One could update the information when he/she encounters the similar problems with better solutions. This iterative process lead cognition level to meta-cognition and epistemic cognition, creating new ideas and new knowledge in people's mind unconsciously.
Wikipedia, as the most successful free knowledge sharing platform, is a typical example to demonstrate how social networking environment brings knowledge to people. Every time when a participant search some key words of what kind of subjects and read the articles of Wikipedia, the first level(Cognition) is involved. After getting to know something, he/she could take some notes and make a rating for the pages which achieve the second level(Metacognition). Base on the learning process and the information he/she absorb, if the participant was inspired to reach some knowledge advancement that could make a new post or improve the existing articles for benefiting others, it would arrive at the Epistemic Cognition level, the highest one in the cognition hierarchy.
Something to share & discuss:
Wikipedia blacked out its site at 18th of Jan. to protest against legislation of 'Stop Online Piracy and Protect Intellectual Property Acts' in the US congress. People afraid the legislation would give US government the power to censor the internet using the technical approaches like the ways China, Iran do. This incident aroused a big controversy on the internet because hundreds of thousands of people especially students who get used to find information on this online encyclopedia and they can't imagine the world without the this free knowledge sharing platform. The site urges Wikipedia readers in the US to contact their local congressman to vote against the bills. Whether you agree or not. The online social networking platform do exert an incredible impact on the world we live.
