Information School News

In recent research, Information School alumni Xuguang Li, Senior lecturer Dr. Andrew Cox and Zefeng Wang from Shenzhen Energy Group Co explored a LinkedIn Dell User Group, where users help each other to fix product problems, as a case study in how social network sites can support the construction of knowledge. They found that the groups users were actively engaged in collaborative construction of knowledge and that a key phase in this knowledge construction took place in discussions categorised as “proposing a new idea”. The research also found that the collaboration was supported by the ways that the LinkedIn platform enables one-to-one interaction. In the group there was frequent usage of the technical symbol @ to communicate with particular members about testing their idea, to ask focused questions and more. The authors argue that the visibility of the users’ identity in the group was key to the cooperation and lack of verbal abuse that they saw in the activities on the platf...

Last week, members of the Information School attended the 2017 iConference in Wuhan, China. One of our PhD students, Wasim Ahmed, gives his highlights below, along with some of his photos from the trip. --- My highlights from my trip included me presenting a poster on my pilot study from my PhD, and which received good interest from delegates, particularly concerning the methodology that was used. A number of very useful connections were made from across the world, and there was a lot of interest in the 2018 edition of the iConference which will take place in Sheffield  hosted in collaboration with Northumbria University.   I also enjoyed visiting the Yellow Crane Tower, Hubei Provincial Museum, the East Lake, Wuhan, and the Yangtze River. Wuhan is a beautiful city, and the people are very friendly. I read online that the people in Wuhan are unusually nice, and I have to say that this is very true and I felt very welcome in the city. I...