Research On Self-Organization Of Information In Social Q&A Community

Social Question and Answer(Q&A)communities are new Q&A network communities that based on the traditional keyword search Q&A platforms.Zhihu,as a representative of these Social Q&A communities,is developing rapidly in china now.In recent years,some of the network hot events break out and spread in Zhihu,which built up a network of public opinion spontaneously,as well as set the agenda for other network media,and guide public opinion.Social Q&A communities is becoming more and more important as network discourse spaces in which social public can participate in public issues and communicate with each other equally.This study introduces the self-organization theory in natural philosophy to explain the spreading of information and the development of public opinion in the socialized Q&A community.The key point of this study is self-organization mechanism in socialized Q&A community.As the self-organization theory is a theory cluster,this study chooses the dissipative structure theory,synergetic theory and supercirculation theory in this theory cluster to construct the dimension of this study and a complete self-organization development process.Based on the theoretical construction,this study defines related concepts and clarifies main research questions,including the base of the socialized Q&A community that constitute self-organization mechanism,the self-organization mechanism and spreading path of specific issue that spreading in the community and the influencing factors(order parameter)and the effect of such self organization mechanism.In order to solve the research problem,this study chooses the "Wei Zexi event" as a case study.In the case analysis,the"event-process" analysis and discourse analysis method is adopted to analysis the interaction of members' roles and communication discourse in the development of the event in community,and presents the information self-organization node and the development process.This study gives the following research results:first of all,the socialized Q&A community which is represented by Zhihu based on the open hierarchical structure and non-equilibrium,non-linear internal information interaction constitute the basic situation of self-organization;Secondly,the spread of specific topics in the socialized Q&A community presents a link-based self-organization development process and a discontinuous information evolution path.The driving factors of these spreading include the competition and coordination among the members as well as the competition and the interplay between the discourses.The development states of these spreading fluctuate and become stable by turns.In addition,the self-organization mechanism of the information in the community of Q&A,including the initial issues,the discourse strategy,opinion leaders,opinion consensus ratio not only promote group recognition and aggregation but also generate social value and social risk.