Toward Collective Intelligence of Online Communities: a Primitive Conceptual Model

Inspired by the ideas of Swarm Intelligence and the “global brain”, a concept of “community intelligence” is suggested in the present paper, reflecting that some “intelligent” features may emerge in a Web-mediated online community from interactions and knowledge-transmissions between the community members. This possible research field of community intelligence is then examined under the backgrounds of “community” and “intelligence” researches. Furthermore, 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 human network, and the knowledge network. Furthermore, based on a dyad of knowledge in two forms of “knowing” and “knoware”, the dynamic view describes the basic mechanics of the formation and evolution of “community intelligence”. A few relevant research issues are shortly discussed on the basis of the proposed conceptual model.