Toward a concept of community intelligence: A view on knowledge sharing and fusion in Web-mediated communities

Inspired by the ideas of the ldquoglobal brainrdquo and Swarm Intelligence, a concept of ldquocommunity intelligencerdquo is suggested in the present paper, reflecting that some ldquointelligentrdquo features may emerge in a Web-mediated community from interactions and knowledge-transmissions between community members. A conceptual model of community intelligence is developed from two views. From the structural view, the community intelligent system is modeled as a knowledge supernetwork that is comprised of triple interwoven networks of the media network (the Web), the human network, and the knowledge networks. Furthermore, based on a dyad of knowledge in two forms of ldquoknowingrdquo and ldquoknowarerdquo, the dynamic view describes the basic mechanics of the formation and evolution of ldquocommunity intelligencerdquo. Two categories of relevant research issues are shortly discussed on the basis of the proposed conceptual model.