Reputation is not only a corporate issue, with personal standing and trust crucial to building fruitful connections in social media spaces. In their review of the dynamics of collective learning Gubbin and MacCurtain (2008) discuss the complexity and importance of trust relations in social networks and the close relationship between tie-strength (Granovetter 1973) and trust. However Levin and Cross (2004) find weak ties potentially more beneficial than strong ties as they are “more likely than a strong tie to provide nonredundant information” (Levin and Cross 2004:1480). If all of your connections share common interests or expertise you will have multiple opportunities to discover or access the same information, but a connection with someone with another area of expertise can act as a gateway to this “nonredundant” information you are less likely to have alternative access to. In these contexts, Levin and Cross argue, trust may be based upon the quality of information shared rather than the sharer’s standing.
Sharma et al (2010), in their current research into “patterns of interaction and everyday knowledge sharing” compare patterns of sharing in public hobby sites and self-directed learning social network sites. This research is investigating informal exchange and has already identified several knowledge-sharing patterns in social media sites:
“(a) knowledge telling; (b) seeking advice/explanation; (c) experience sharing; (d) public deliberation; (e) mutual goal setting and achievement; (f) data sharing to improve practice.”
(Sharma et al, 2010, p. 395).
These early findings seem to support Viseu’s (2000) position on the importance of the object in social learning exchanges. Similarly Java, Song, Finin and Tseng (2007) have also found that sharing of links and resources was a key feature of exchanges on Twitter.
In their forthcoming book Jenkins, Ford and Green (in press) take the centrality of objects further, describing emerging gift economies around exchange of digital artefacts, knowledge, and “gifts”. These “spreadable media” gifts may be anything from expert advice, discount coupons, important news items, or even amusing LOLcats[1]. Sharing takes place as a way to maintain and develop relationships with the act and impact of sharing, and the quality of the object shared enabling influential sharers to build up symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1984) in their networks.
This concept is familiar from the Open Source Software community. In his work on software developers’ motivations for contributing, David Zeitlyn (2003) references Marcel Mauss’s work on gift economies (Mauss 1954), and Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of “symbolic capital” (Bourdieu 1984). Symbolic capital concerns not only the value of an object but the symbolic prestige associated with that object’s context. Zeitlyn argues that not only are gifts exchanged but also that symbolic capital can be connected to the potential for material gain arising from the prestige of (unpaid) contributions to open source projects.
[1] LOLcats are “images of cats with a text caption that combine for humorous effect”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat
Previous Section: Identity, performance and reputation | Next Section: What are the potential problems with learning with or through social media?