| With the rapid development of computer technology, modern communication technology and information technology, social media applications featuring the wide range of information accessing, fast updating and transmission, strong interactivity have been widely adopted in various of enterprises and even people’s social life at large. The social media is based on Web2.0 technology and the applications widely adopted today include Wechat, Blog, RSS, Wiki, Tag, SNS, P2P and Instant Messaging (IM). Over the past years, a significant number of research has demonstrated that social media can enhance an enterprise’s knowledge management capacity and foster its competitiveness. Under the context of Web2.0, people, things (objectives) and objects (technology) in an enterprise establish an interdependent relationship of mutual influence and restriction, hence forming a communicative ecology circle combining the people, technology and objectives together. Within this communicative ecology circle where mutual influence is achieved through communication, a research to study the changes of organization structures and communication patterns in enterprises after using social media, how social media facilitates communication among the members within, the influence of social media on the enterprise’s knowledge management capacity, the influential factors and the mutual relationship, as well as the enterprise’s attitudes towards the wide use of social media is of both theoretical and practical importance.This dissertation, in order to understand the state of arts of the topic, broadly explored wide range of literatures, domestic and abroad, to study the deployment of social media among enterprises, knowledge management capacity and the communicative ecology circle. It is concluded that no previous studies conducted to explore the influence of social media on the enterprise knowledge management capacity by means of communicative ecology framework and the study hence enriches the research and application of information technology among organizations.To build our conceptual model of study, this dissertation analyzes the communicative ecology framework with its paths of studies. These analysis focused on "Technology (T)→ Social Relations (S)", "Social Relations (S)→iscursive Goal (D)", "Technology (T)→ Discursive Goal (D)" in line with the roadmap of the communicative ecology framework. An explorative study conducted afterwards to research a new approach, i.e. "Technology (T)→ Social Relations (S)→Discursive Goal (D)" by using social networking service analysis. The conceptual model to study the influence of social media on enterprise’s knowledge management capacity has been constructed based on above research efforts.In order to better study the interrelationship of the various parts of the conceptual model, this dissertation extracts, defines, and measures variables from the social media, social relations, and knowledge management capacity. The fundamental theories to support the study are those of Social Network Theory, Social Capital Theory, Knowledge Management Theory and the Theory of Technology Adoption and Acceptance. Upon the analysis, this research identifies "Collaborative Sharing", "Convenience", "Connectivity", and "Network Externality" as the four secondary variables in the social media; "Business Communication" and "Interpersonal Communication" as the two secondary variables in social relations, "Knowledge Acquisition", "Knowledge Transfer", and "Knowledge Application" as the three secondary variables in knowledge management capacity. A hypothesis concerning the direct and indirect influence of social media as well as the influence of the control variables has been proposed and the research model to study the influence of social media on the enterprise’s knowledge management capacity constructed.In order to test the effectiveness of the constructed conceptual model, the study selected some IT enterprises as the research objects. Final research questionnaire is completed based on the questionnaire design and pilot research. The reliability and validity test, descriptive statistical analysis, normal distribution examination, confirmatory factor analysis, and variance analysis are conducted on the data collected. AMOS is also employed to analyze and fit the structural equation model; and consequently confirms the revised research model which is based on the communicative ecology framework and serves to study the influence of social media on the enterprises’knowledge management capacity. A discussion concerning the analysis of the data collected in this study has been presented.Finally this dissertation has put forward some strategies and suggestions, depending on the research results, in such areas as the attitudes towards, selection and use of the social medial in the enterprises, the enterprises internal social relations management, as well as the design and implementation of the enterprises’ knowledge management system.The innovation of this article can be demonstrated in the following three fields:1 The technological layer, social layer, and discursive layer of a communicative ecological framework are interacted with each other and form a circular relationship like those in an ecosphere. Previous researches focused on aspects of single layer or just two layers, or partial layer or paths rather than the approach to take the three layers as a whole to explore the impact of social media to enterprise KM (knowledge management) capacity based on the communicative ecological framework. This study, for the first time, undertook an exploratory verification on the path Technology→ Social Relations → Discursive Goal, by means of social network method; a conceptual model of social media impact on KM capacity is constructed to study the unified entirety incorporated from three factors of People (Social Relations), Business (KM Capacity) and Object (Social Media Techniques) in ways of multi-factors and multi-folds. This goes beyond the boundary of previous studies, extends and enriches the area of Communicative Ecological Framework and Enterprise KM Capacity.2 Without taking into account the influence of social media and social relations on enterprise KM capacity, previous studies fail to measure the comprehensive features of social media and social relations with relevant variables. Based on the literature review and the exploratory research, this thesis proposes four new variables:"Collaborative Sharing", "Connectivity", "Business Communication", and "Interpersonal Communication". In line with the research theme, this study evaluates the features of social media in terms of "Collaborative Sharing", "Convenience", "Connectivity", and "Network Externality" and the features of the "Social Relations" in terms of "Business Communication" and "Interpersonal Communication". The proposal and the verification of the new variables can provide reference to other relevant research.3 There was rarely any research conducted to explore the impact of social media on KM capacity before. Based on the features extraction, a model of study in this research is constructed as "Influence of Social Media on Enterprise KM Capacity in the Context of Communicative Ecological Framework "; IT enterprises are selected in the empirical study to verify the correlation of each variables in all respects of multi-layers and multi-paths; specific influence factors, paths and mechanism of social media to enterprise KM capacity are discovered including a) the direct impact of variables of social media to the enterprise KM capacity, b) the indirect impact of variables of social relations to the enterprise KM capacity, c) the functions of the nature of property rights as the control variable. This result will help uncover the essence of social media to KM capacity and provide new perspectives and ways to enhance the knowledge management capacity of an enterprise.
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