The article "Collective Intelligence in Disaster" by Vieweg et al. outlines the case of "decentralized and grassroots distributed problem-solving" exemplified by the Facebook groups that popped up the day of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. By examining the exchanges that took place in a Facebook discussion thread, they analyzed the social mechanisms by which a group of college students were able to compile an accurate list of the the 32 victims.
When it comes to collective problem-solving, the connective power of the Internet benefits any situation where the common individual has the power to contribute. The Internet has the power to aggregate the information of many regular citizens. For example, forums threads asking for help with technological problems are instances of collective problem-solving. The other day I kept getting an error message attempting to access GoogleDocs. A quick search around the Google help page brought me to a forum thread about my specific error message. Not only did people post requests for help, those who found solutions shared them. One poster commented that using Firefox instead of IE worked for him/her. Though one poster didn't find a solution, (s)he shared information that helped pinpoint the problem: (s)he tried different versions of IE to no avail. By sharing information, members enable the group as a whole to become more efficient, so that people will not waste time trying things already proven ineffective by others.
In the article, Vieweg notes the mechanism of brokering, where one poster culled information from other Facebook sources outside the group. The Internet as an information network can especially facilitate the brokering of information, as it is easy to share links or information/media pulled from other online sources. I saw examples of brokering in other help forums, where members posted quotes from and links to previous relevant threads.
Thus, I believe any situation where individuals have access to information that is relevant to a distributed audience can benefit from networking technology. Not only should the people be connected, as mobile phones allow, but the people should share a common "workspace", where they can store the information as it accumulates. This allows group members to review and discuss progress. Facebook gave students an quick way to set up a space for sharing information, and, as a social networking site that directly involved VT students, both victims and non-victims, and their friends, it provided credibility and (virtual) proximity to the actual event.
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I would never even think to go on the google help page if i was having a problem, what a good idea. Now that i know it is really helpful, i'll have to check it out if Google is giving me problems. I think that was a really good example of a situation where brokering took place, and posts sent users to other helpful sites. It is really useful to have a variety of information in one place for people to sift through. The knowledge that this is a common area does seem to foster a sense of connection, both in the VT situation, and even in simple situations like needing help with google docs.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting way to view Google - I hadn't thought of going on google to look for answers for things like computer problems as one that paralleled the Virginia Tech shooting, but it makes sense, especially in the fact that people online do work together to pose many alternate solutions and courses of action to solve the problem. At the same time, however, I believe that in that case, google is not the collaborative technology, but merely a search engine that points you to finding the technologies that do promote group problem solving, like the forums you mentioned, in particular.
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