Information Technology Reference
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One of the most compelling examples of ben-
efits accrued from online group membership is so-
cial support offered in the context of health-related
issues. White and Dorman (2001) maintain that the
most common online social support groups focus
on health-related issues and are characterized by
extensive knowledge sharing via virtual communi-
ties, particularly by using group e-mail. White and
Dorman (2001) also report that online community
members feel an obligation and responsibility to
share their valuable knowledge with others, with
this stimulating knowledge transfer in these online
virtual communities (Burrows, Nettleton, Pleace,
Loader, & Muncer, 2000; Mitra, 1997).
White and Dorman (2001) suggest that educa-
tors must acknowledge motivations and patterns
of people's knowledge sharing behavior and
understand how to apply online social support
processes for educational purposes. Addition-
ally, Estabrook, Witt and Rainie (2007) highlight
the importance of health and other educational
information sharing among online users. They
suggest that people use online information as
their primary information source (58 per cent) to
solve health and education problems as opposed
to other mass media sources like news papers,
television and radio. Online information sources
were viewed as being of a high quality. Similarly,
Estabrook et al. (2007) found that the Internet
has become the primary information source for
health and well being information and that this
information is reliable; with 93 per cent of Internet
users commenting that they were satisfied getting
health-related educational information online.
Based on the popularity of the Internet as an
information source, it is useful for human services
workers to develop their understanding of how
knowledge is shared online. More specifically,
Phelps et al. (2005) propose the need to understand
why people are motivated to share pro-social
knowledge with others, and what other critical
factors could influence knowledge sharing and
community education online. They also suggest
that educators can benefit from collaborating with
experts in commercial marketing to maximize the
likelihood of success.
Today, it is difficult to find a productive bal-
ance between efforts in the commercial realm of
marketing and the more altruistic efforts of health
promotion and community education. As de-
scribed earlier, the body of research on knowledge
sharing in marketing industry is comparatively
advanced in both theoretical and practical aspects,
while the application of online knowledge sharing
in pro-social domains like health promotion and
community education is at an embryonic stage.
The following discussion applies some of the main
theoretical principles for online knowledge shar-
ing used in marketing and applies these to health
promotion and community education.
tHeoretical frameWork for
online knoWleDge SHaring
Three major theoretical concepts with empirical
foundations in the field of marketing are particu-
larly relevant to online knowledge sharing in the
human services. These are:
1.
Diffusion of innovation (knowledge);
2.
Online word of mouth (e-WOM); and
3.
Viral marketing
Diffusion of Innovation
is 'The process by
which an innovation is communicated through
certain channels over time among the members
of a social system' (Rogers, 1995, p.5). Even
though Diffusion of Innovation was initially
created to explain the adoption of technology, it
has also been used for knowledge and news dis-
semination. It is useful for knowledge diffusion
to be acknowledged by social educators because
of its influence on power and culture (Herie &
Martin, 2002).
Originally word of mouth (WOM) referrals in
offline contexts like face-to-face communication
were defined as 'the informal communication
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