Knowledge Sharing Online - Information Communication Technologies for Human Services Education and Delivery - page 239

future trenDS target weak tie online relationships to distribute

their messages. Ultimately whatever the message,
it must be perceived as salient by online users in
order to maximize their desire to disseminate it
throughout their networks.

To stimulate motivation health promoters and
educators need to attract the interest of online
users by appealing to their altruism, feelings of
obligation, or the pleasure they obtain by sharing
relevant messages. It is expected that the pro-social
nature of health related education messages will
facilitate this as online users can experience a sense
of obligation and altruism simply by sharing health
promotion and community education messages.
Messages could be promoted well through weak
tie online relationships as these are often preferred
when people are seeking information and do not
have any particular loyalty about an inquiry (Carl,
2006). The salient points of health promotion
and community education messages need to be
identified and stressed, such as potential risks or
benefits, when messages are created for them to
be distributed rapidly and widely.

referenceS

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concluSion

As outlined in the e-Mavenism model, online
knowledge sharing behaviors are induced by
three predictors; internal factors, social network
size, and topic salience. Relative to the internal
factors, online users have a greater desire to share
information with other online users when they feel
more obliged to share information and expect the
message to be helpful to other online users (al-
truism). Information is shared more readily with
other online users when they are predisposed to
achieving self-pleasure for sharing this knowledge
with others. Based on these three internal factors,
it is suggested that educators and professionals in
health-related education should foster a greater
sense of obligation, altruism and self-pleasure
associated with sharing educational messages by
emphasizing the good cause of health promotion
and community education. It is further proposed
that health promoters and community educators

Carl, W. J. (2006). What's all the buzz about?
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