Production Of Knowledge On The Internet Platform

This dissertation focuses on the'social media'and investigates its significance to the'knowledge production'. Starting from the elaboration of the opening up trends of knowledge production, this study presents the role of social media in promoting the diversification of knowledge sources, the innovation of production models and transformation of the rules through defining social media and its technological characteristics. Furthermore, it reveals the influences of transforming communication models on people's understanding of the social structure—knowledge—from the perspective of the development of media technology. It also explores the opportunities and challenges brought by the new internet technology to knowledge production in general.The study follows the basic ideas of knowledge sociology and concentrates on the relationship between media technology and knowledge production, rather than the different types of knowledge. With regard to the methodology, this study conducts in-depth interviews and participatory observations on two closely related cases. It needs to be explained that because of the specific characteristics of research subject and cases, the in-depth interview and participatory obervation is conducted in the cyberspace, instead of face-to-face way. Thus, the dissertation has innovative value in terms of research methodologies and provides references for further studies.In the introduction section, the paper first clarifies the development trends of Internet technology, especially the rising of social media, and makes clear the logics and basic ideas of this research. It also presents the dissertation's core issue, methodology and reviews the existing literature both on the subjets of social media and knowledge production. Chapter One defines the term of knowledge production and probes the sociology of knowledge production from the perspective of individuals and communities, then it describes the opening trends of knowledge production from the historical dimension. Chapter Two goes on with discussing the contribution to the expansion of knowledge production made by distributed network technology, particularly social media; it also illustrates the types and technical characterics of social media as knowledge space. Chapter Three probes the new trend-the rise of amateur-of the subject of knowledge production on the distributed network. At the same time, the role and function of intellectual elites in the new knowledge space is restated, the interaction mechanisms between intellectuals and general publics in the new knowledge space are presented. Taking TEDtoChina as a case study, Chapter Four articulates what means'social production', and explores the radical change of the models of knowledge production caused by new internet technology. In order to indicate the challenges of media technology to the rules of knowledge production, Chapter Five sheds lights on the future of sharing-based knowledge production via the case study of'Creative Commons'.The dissertation ends with the conclusion of research question, and points out the limitations and shortcomings of this study for further study.