Community Collaboration

Tuesday, 25 February 13:16

The feedback process and the knowledge loop described in Community Knowledge Sharing can be taken further. 

Digital communications enable both individual and community feedback to go to content creators directly; this can happen through the mediation of the publisher, or independently. Although a cautious publisher might prefer to resist this, particularly the latter, fearing it could be disruptive, it can also be turned to advantage. Direct contact between consumers and creators can lead to new product ideas as well as suggestions for improvement. This feedback is not dependent on social media and has happened since pre-digital times at publishing events or festivals or other gatherings such as readings where the shared interests of all coincide. 

Building on the Community Knowledge Sharing diagrams, Figure 3, below, represents the ways sharing knowledge directly works. Knowledge-sharing takes place between the community who are fans of the author or the creative team, and potentially between individual enthusiasts as well. Whether or not the publisher is mediating this, there’s inevitably an increase in the flow of ideas and opportunities. And this helps fuel the evolving knowledge ecosystem that drives this niche.