Marloes vd Meer: Knowledge sharing through social media use – The results

Some time ago, I blogged here about my research on the professional use of social media. The study drew on a theory of knowledge sharing through the use of different functionalities of social network services.

Having now completed the study, in this second guest blog I would like to take you through some of the results.

Do we share knowledge in our use of social media? 

Yes, we do! In my previous guest blog I distinguished three processes needed for effective knowledge sharing:

1. Developing an understanding of ‘who knows what’ in our social network,
2. Using this understanding to allocate knowledge or information to others in this network, and
3. Retrieving needed knowledge or information from our social network.

In knowledge management literature, these processes are known as transactive processes, needed for the development of a ‘transactive memory system’.

One of the most interesting outcomes of my research is that these transactive processes, and thereby the development of a transactive memory system, do take place in professionals’ use of social media. In fact, the way we use these social media and the intensity with which we use them has a direct positive effect on these transactive processes. The extent to which we value the different functionalities of social media has an indirect positive effect on the transactive processes (through our use of social media), where functionalities to build a network (personal profiles, connecting to others and recommendations) and functionalities to interact in a network (communication tools and message boards) have to strongest effects. Put simply, the more one values the functionalities of a social network service, the more one will use this service, and the more knowledge one shares through this service.

Which form of social media do we use most, and how does this influence knowledge sharing?

Of the social media used for professional purposes, LinkedIn turned out to be most popular. This medium was used by 69% of the respondents, followed by Twitter (32%), Facebook (20%) and Yammer (18%). Respondents were also asked to indicate a single service they use most in their work. Again, LinkedIn turned out to be most popular (38%), followed by Twitter (16%), Facebook (6%) and Yammer (6%).

A very interesting result of this research is that these different social media turned out to be valued differently, are used differently, and lead to different knowledge sharing behaviors. Let’s focus on the knowledge sharing behaviors on these different media.

• On the first transactive process, developing an understanding of what others know, Twitter scores significantly higher than other social media, while Yammer scores significantly lower. Users apparently get to know a lot about each other through their communication on Twitter. Yammer is a weak tool for this process. Two explanations for this result are possible. One explanation is that profiles do not play a significant role on Yammer and that people do not take the time to view the profiles of others. A second explanation is that Yammer is an intra-organizational tool. Users may already know the colleagues they connect with on Yammer and already have developed an understanding of what these people know. The result that LinkedIn does not score high on this process is rather surprising, because profiles are the core functionality of LinkedIn. Also, LinkedIn profiles are very illusive, providing the opportunity to hold a lot of work-related personal information.

• On the second transactive processes, allocating information to people in your social network, Twitter again scores significantly higher than other services, while LinkedIn scores significantly lower. More information is allocated on Twitter, and less on LinkedIn. The high score of Twitter on this process can be explained by the fact that Twitter is mostly used to send messages, not to receive them. Users of Twitter probably pay more attention to their own messages than to those of their alters.

• On the last transactive process, retrieving knowledge from your social network, LinkedIn again scores significantly lower than other services. Users of LinkedIn do not often use this medium to find and retrieve knowledge.

Overall, the results show that Twitter is a rather strong tool for knowledge sharing. This might support a common claim in the knowledge management literature that communication stimulates knowledge sharing, since Twitter also scores high on its functionalities to interact. Twitter is built around communication.

While being the most popular social medium in this research, LinkedIn scored rather low on the knowledge sharing processes. This tool is used more to get to know the people in one’s network than to share knowledge and information with them. LinkedIn is used to build a network, not to do something with this network.

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Marloes van der Meer was an honors student for the KIN Master, and Research Assistant. For full results or to get in touch with Marloes, please contact her via twitter or via email.

For more information on transactive memory systems research, please contact Leonie Houtman.