Social Network Sites and Knowledge Transfer: an Urban Perspective

Dr Emmanouil Tranos

The below text is based on a paper, which although it was written before the Covid19 pandemic, it assists us in understanding the complexities, the opportunities and the role of geography for online knowledge transfer and creation, something that quite a few of us have been asked to swiftly engage with.

The paper exposes whether and how Social Network Sites (SNS) support knowledge transfer and creation and whether such processes complement or supplement face-to-face (F2F) knowledge-related interactions, which tend to take place in dense urban areas. Urban planners have traditionally been responsible for designing and intervening in neighborhoods and economic clusters to facilitate F2F interactions (KOO, 2005). Building upon the strong social underpinning of knowledge and knowledge transfer processes, this paper explores if and how such internet technologies and applications support knowledge transfer and creation based on their capacity to support online interactions between individuals. By exploring the role of SNS in supporting knowledge transfer and creation, this paper contributes to the literature, which claims that although the internet has drastically increased the easiness to access and circulate information around the globe, accessing and transferring knowledge has, at best, not been drastically eased by digital technologies (e.g. BATHELT and COHENDET, 2014; FARAJ et al., 2016). Although research has explored how computer-mediated communications vis-à-vis F2F interactions can support knowledge transfer (BATHELT and TURI, 2011), we know little about how distinct internet application such as SNS, can assist these processes. We also know little about how such processes are reflected in space and cities. While the planning literature has raised the question of whether F2F communications will be supplemented or not by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (RHOADS, 2010), it has not considered the affordances of SNS in this process and, more specifically, in knowledge-related interactions.

What is interesting from a geography and urban planning point of view is the spatiality of these processes. Knowledge has a strong spatial dimension because it is embodied in individuals, who still have fixed addresses despite the increased physical mobility opportunities available today (HEALY and MORGAN, 2012; HOWELLS, 2012). Therefore, sharing and creating knowledge is a geographical problem of facilitating interactions between individuals, something which is usually supported by their (permanent or temporary) collocation. Hence, knowledge and knowledge creation are characterized by specific geographies reflecting, to a certain extent, existing urbanization patterns as core urban areas are the places where the demand for complex and knowledge-intensive tasks is matched with the supply of individuals who carry high volume of complex and tacit knowledge. After all, knowledge spillovers is a driving force behind agglomeration externalities and urban planners still aim to facilitate such externalities (MARSHALL, 1890).

Therefore, knowledge spillovers are often headline elements in urban planning and development strategies not only because they are tightly interwoven with economic outcomes such as productivity increase and innovation, but, most importantly, because urban planners are asked to design urban neighborhoods to support the creation of economic clusters by enhancing such spillovers. However, how knowledge spillovers are affected by the increased interactions via SNS is not clear. Hence, gaining an understanding of how widely used technologies such as SNS can support knowledge-related interactions is of great importance for the planning literature (KOO, 2005; RHOADS, 2010). In addition, illustrating how SNS can support knowledge transfer and creation enables us to better explain the transformative nature of digital technologies and inform the literature, which has highlighted the capacity of such technologies to support the circulation of information, but not necessarily of knowledge. Although planning research had focused on the internet early enough, it did not emphasize its role in supporting knowledge-related interactions neither the spatial reflection of these processes. Moreover, although the literature has examined the role of digital technologies in complementing or supplementing F2F interactions, it has not focused on the specific roles that SNS can perform. This paper addresses the above gaps and contributes to this literature by offering an urban perspective of how these processes vary across space and whether they follow, or challenge established geographies of knowledge.

The theoretical vehicle to explore these questions is the local buzz/global pipeline metaphor (BATHELT et al., 2004), which offers a typology of SNS-mediated individual interactions, which have the capacity to facilitate knowledge transfer between individual actors. Using this typology, this paper brings together empirical literature from business studies, media studies, sociology and economic geography to illustrate how specific SNS can support such knowledge-related interactions among individuals. The analysis shows that, on the one hand, knowledge-related interactions between individuals, which fit under the local buzz or the global pipeline typologies, seem to scale with population and have disproportionally higher effects in large urban areas following existing trajectories of knowledge production. On the other hand, purely online interactions, which fit under the virtual buzz typology, have the capacity to escape agglomeration forces and challenge established geographies of knowledge production. The above findings speak to Rhoads’ (2010, p. 118) call to understand “whether face-to-face communication will be driven back or reduced by the convenience of computer-mediated communication”.

The planning literature has praised the infrastructural functionality of SNS, which leads to increased public participation into planning processes, co-design of spaces, increased capabilities for disaster management and place branding. However, platforms such as SNS also act as invisible infrastructures and either further enhance existing agglomeration externalities or provide a window of opportunity for places, which do not usually generate knowledge spillovers. The take-home message to the planning literature and practice is that SNS intervene with the mechanisms through which knowledge spillovers occur. Although the need for designing spaces that enhance human interactions in order to achieve knowledge spillovers has not been challenged by the extensive use of SNS and, often, SNS usage enhances these externalities, we now know that for some very specific cases the absence of such spaces can be supplemented by current digital tools including SNS.

Full article reference: Tranos, E. (2020), Social network sites and knowledge transfer: an urban perspective, Journal of Planning Literature, in press, pp. xx-xx. Copyright © 2020 (SAGE) 

References

BATHELT H. and COHENDET P. (2014) The creation of knowledge: local building, global accessing and economic development—toward an agenda, Journal of Economic Geography 14, 869-82.

BATHELT H., MALMBERG A. and MASKELL P. (2004) Clusters and knowledge: local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation, Progress in Human Geography 28, 31-56.

BATHELT H. and TURI P. (2011) Local, global and virtual buzz: the importance of face-to-face contact in economic interaction and possibilities to go beyond, Geoforum 42, 520-9.

FARAJ S., VON KROGH G., MONTEIRO E. and LAKHANI K. R. (2016) Special Section Introduction—Online Community as Space for Knowledge Flows, Information Systems Research 27, 668-84.

HEALY A. and MORGAN K. (2012) Spaces of innovation: learning, proximity and the ecological turn, Regional Studies 46, 1041-53.

HOWELLS J. (2012) The geography of knowledge: never so close but never so far apart, Journal of Economic Geography 12, 1003-20.

KOO J. (2005) Technology spillovers, agglomeration, and regional economic development, Journal of Planning Literature 20, 99-115.

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RHOADS M. (2010) Face-to-face and computer-mediated communication: What does theory tell us and what have we learned so far?, Journal of Planning Literature 25, 111-22.