Social information processing is "an activity through which collective human actions organize knowledge." It is the creation and processing of information by a group of people. As an academic field Social Information Processing studies the information processing power of networked social systems.
Typically computer tools are used such as:
- Authoring tools: e.g., blogs
- Collaboration tools: e.g., wikis, in particular, e.g., Wikipedia
- Translating tools: Duolingo, reCAPTCHA
- Tagging systems (social bookmarking): e.g., del.icio.us, Flickr, CiteULike
- Social networking: e.g., Facebook, MySpace, Essembly
- Collaborative filtering: e.g., Digg, the Amazon Product Recommendation System, Yahoo answers, Urtak
Although computers are often used to facilitate networking and collaboration, they are not required. For example the Trictionary in 1982 was entirely paper and pen based, relying on neighborhood social networks and libraries. The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in the 19th century was done largely with the help of anonymous volunteers organized by help wanted adds in newspapers and slips of paper sent through the postal mail.
Read more about Social Information Processing: Current State of Knowledge, See Also
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