What is Group Awareness

Addressing knowledge communication with shared databases, this chapter focuses on an asynchronous, many-to-many type of computer-mediated communication (CMC). After an introduction, which characterizes this kind of CMC and provides definitions, various aspects are discussed that influence people’s behavior in knowledge communication with shared databases. This presentation focuses on psychological rather than on technological factors. The first aspect presented is the influence of anonymity and identifiability, followed by the impact of metaknowledge. Next, costs and bonus systems, and then feedback and guidelines are discussed. Other aspects which are considered are group size and participant personality. For each of these influencing factors, underlying theoretical approaches as well as empirical results are presented. Subsequently, these considerations and findings are examined with respect to their practical applications. In conclusion, future trends in database-oriented knowledge communication are discussed.