Title:	CONTRIBUTION GRAPHING: A METHOD FOR ANALYZING CO-CONSTRUCTED KNOWLEDGE IN ONLINE ADVICE DISCUSSIONS
Author(s):	Nick V. Flor
ISBN:	978-972-8924-93-5
Editors:	Pedro Isaías, Bebo White and Miguel Baptista Nunes
Year:	2009
Edition:	1
Keywords:	Social Networking Methods, Case Study, Distributed Cognition
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	101
Last Page:	108
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	As more people engage in social networking and interact in virtual worlds, researchers need methods for analyzing the knowledge co-constructed during conversations. While it is generally accepted that two people collaborating — whether offline or online — co-construct knowledge, we lack methods that make visually explicit the different forms of coconstructed knowledge. I present a method I developed known as contribution graphing, which takes an online conversation between two or more individuals, and depicts different forms of co-constructed knowledge. I apply this method to an advice thread taken from a teen advice forum and show that co-constructed knowledge can take on forms that include: (a) sharing actors; (b) sharing actions and propositions about world states and mental states; (c) the modification, qualification, and instantiation of actions and propositions; (d) using propositions as conditional states for new actions; and (e) embedding shared propositions within new propositions. I end by discussing potential ways of using co-constructed knowledge forms, to improve contributions to social networking sites.
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