AMY S. BRUCKMAN
Should You Believe Wikipedia? Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge Amy S. Bruckman
Online Communities and the Construction of
Knowledge
UK publication January 2022 US publication January 2022 320 pages 9781108748407 Paperback £14.99 / $19.99 USD / $22.95 CAD
As we interact online we are creating new kinds of knowledge and community. How are these communities formed? How do we know whether to trust them as sources of information? In other words, should we believe Wikipedia? This book explores what community is, what knowledge is, how the internet facilitates new kinds of community, and how knowledge is shaped through online collaboration and conversation. Along the way the author tackles issues such as how we represent ourselves online and how this shapes how we interact, why there is so much bad behavior online and what we can do about it. And the most important question of all: What can we as internet users and designers do to help the internet to bring out the best in us all?
Amy S. Bruckman is Regents’ Professor and Senior Associate Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology where she studies online communities. Bruckman received her Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab in 1997. She is a Fellow of The ACM and a member of the SIGCHI Academy. She founded her first online community in 1993, and has been teaching the class ‘Design of Online Communities’ at Georgia Tech since 1998. She currently helps moderate a number of large online communities.
At a glance
Advance praise
• Explains the nature of knowledge and how it is collaboratively created on the internet, giving readers a more nuanced understanding of the crisis of truth that we face as a culture
‘This book reminds us of conversations we’re not having about online life - with family, friends, with our political representatives - because we don’t know where to start. The Internet seems so opaque, that we don’t know to get traction on our concern that it no longer serves our human needs. This welcome volume suggests entry points for designers and users - to start those necessary conversations about how to make online life serve our emotional and social purposes. Both scholarly and down-to-earth, filled with compelling examples, it is a textbook for classrooms, dinnertables, and policy discussions.’
• Applies ideas from sociology and philosophy to help readers understand how online communities are designed • Challenges both users and designers of social media and online communities to find ways to make the internet better
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Sherry Turkle, MIT, Author of The Empathy Diaries, Reclaiming Conversation, Alone Together, and Life on the Screen
