Elements of social representation theory incollaborative tagging systems

Abstract

This article discusses the information representation process based on the Moscovici's Social Representation Theory and domain analysis in Information Science. The aim was to identify mechanisms and constituent dimensions of social representation in collaborative tagging systems/social bookmarking systems. Scientific knowledge was defined as the object/phenomenon of representation in these systems; and the tag as the shareable structure of meaning that connects participants and resources. The empirical research involved descriptive statistical techniques applied to a corpora of tags available in CiteULike, which is a social tagging system developed for the academic community. The data analysis, performed in a sample of groups derived from the dataset, showed that the users' reuse of their own tags resembles the anchorage mechanism. The reuse of tags by other participants -in the same group -reveals some evidence of the objectification mechanism. Some speculation arose about the cognitive effort made by the individual, under group influence, with regard to the tagging activity, user's choice of resources, and sharing styles. Further studies on social bookmarking systems depend both on a "gain scale" of users and items tagged, requiring techniques and procedures redesigned by Information Science, Statistics, Network Analysis, Linguistics/Sociolinguistics and Social Psychology. Resumo O artigo discute um recorte na temática de representação da informação explorando a Teoria das Representações Sociais e a abordagem da análise de domínio da Ciência da Informação. Teve como objetivo geral identificar mecanismos e dimensões constituintes da representação social em grupos de participantes de sistemas de colaborativos de marcação (ou sistemas de marcação social). Definiu--se o conhecimento científico como objeto/fenômeno de representação em tais sistemas; delimitou-se a tag/marcação como unidade de registro e de significado; e se considerou os usuários, o conjunto total de tags, e os itens marcados como unidade de contexto. A pesquisa empírica envolveu técnicas de estatística descritiva aplicada à corpora de tags disponíveis em datasets do

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“…One of the notable exceptions includes the use of this theory to analyze a social tagging system. Marchiori et al (2014), who examined tagging in CiteULike, found that some activities like reuse of own tags and reuse of the others' tags resemble anchoring and objectification, respectively, if only to a certain extent. The other examples concern the analysis of the concept of relevance.…”

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“…The dynamics of group interaction to creates a consensus towards unfamiliar objects or events (e.g. phenomenon) which in turn creates a new form of knowledge and construed social entities termed as social representative [16].…”

“…Those objects or phenomena can be of various forms [16] such as physical (e.g. bathroom), interpersonal (e.g.…”