Information Behavior in the Social Web: An Overview of the German Educational Domain

This paper explores participative Social Information Behavior in the educational domain. The goal is to capture a picture of current information practices in the Social Web. The focus is on the “places” and the scale of the Social Web in the domain, the communication dynamics and structure of communities and the specificities, quality, pragmatics and success of communication processes. The paper describes the concept and current implementation status of an online analysis approach and system that tries to answer these questions. Furthermore, first empirical results are presented. Data indicates that participative Social Information Behavior is of relevance in the domain: The volume of openly accessible user-generated content is impressive. The basic characteristics of analyzed forums suggest that such websites resemble sustainable knowledge building communities. Pre-tests regarding the analysis of communication processes denote that generated content can often be seen as a valuable information resource.