Analysis and Visualisation of Semantic Wikis As Cooperative Spaces: Social Network Analysis

The proliferation of collaboration technologies and the www has led to the development of global networks with spatially distributed actors interacting synchronously or asynchronously in virtual spaces. The spatial and timely distribution of the interacting actors results in lack of awareness. Not only are some actors not aware of the existence and nature of interactions between actors but also the existence of interaction rooms on the internet operating as groups of social networks. In the multitude of collaboration technologies available to date wikis have established themselves as technologies for collective article editing reaching the highest levels of popularity with the online open encyclopedia wikipedia. Their proliferation in both the corporate and the research world where globally distributed teams contribute to articles relating to topics of interest. The contributions have developed beyond being simple contributions to being outright interactions within the discussion pages. This book addresses these social networks and an exemplary implementation.