Do Public Electronic Bulletin Boards Help Create Scientific Knowledge?

Abstract

The impact of new technologies on the transformation of information into knowledge is not clear. Especially problematic is the degree to which electronic communication can replace traditional forums in which information is judged and social consensus about its value is achieved. This article uses electronic bulletin boards active during the cold fusion saga that began in 1989 to explore these issues. Dividing the contents of the bulletin boards into big ideas and little ideas, the article suggests that only about half of all messages on the boards were big ideas, and only half of those were on technical issues. The study suggests that the substantial volume of irrelevant material and the difficulty of applying extratextual cues to the judgment of information made the bulletin boards an ineffective tool for creating knowledge in this case.