Social Media for Growing Collective Intelligence in Online Communities

Abstract

Scientific society argues that human group demonstrates higher capabilities of information processing and problem solving than an individual does (Luo et al., 2009). Collective Intelligence (CI) is the general ability of a group to perform a wide variety of tasks (Woolley et al., 2010). With the growth and expansion of the Internet and social media technologies, “the way in which CI is utilized and leveraged has been fundamentally altered” (Wise, 2012). The new channels of social media enable new possibilities to be involved in collaborative activities for broader groups of people without limitations of time or geographical zones. The scientific problem in this chapter is defined is relationship between social media technologies and collective intelligence in networked society. The subject of the research are online community projects (collective intelligence ecosystems) which include social media tools allowing and encouraging individual and team creativity, collective decision making, on-line collaboration, entrepreneurship, etc.