Affordances em redes sociais e fluxos informacionais: diálogos da Ciência da Informação e a teoria das materialidades

Abstract

This thesis aims to highlight the importance of studies on the materiality of media to guide decisions about information sharing technologies and organizational knowledge creation in the field of Information Science and more specifically in the sub-area Knowledge Management. The Affordance Theory - under which the material properties of objects would indicate the potentialities of user actions - was the methodological tool used to explore the different relationships of individuals with diverse platforms for information exchange. The investigative course consisted of a Systematic Review of Literature, in order to obtain a broad panorama on what has been studied about social network affordances for knowledge sharing, and of a case study, whose object of research was a group of consultants on WhatsApp, to empirically analyze the effects of Social Networking Sites affordances on engaging to create organizational knowledge. Based on the data collected, a framework was developed that offers subsidies to think about the materialities of the media, in a way aligned with symbolic elements, thus allowing a systemic view on the technology already implemented or to be adopted. It was observed that the material approach is still little explored in the field of Information Science, especially in empirical studies. However, technological elements must also be considered, in addition to symbolic ones, since they have significant effects on the dissemination of information and, therefore, on the management of "Ba" or shared context for knowledge creation.