Research Commentary — Vigilant Interaction in Knowledge Collaboration: Challenges of Online User Participation Under Ambivalence

Abstract

Online participation engenders both the benefits of knowledge sharing and the risks of harm. Vigilant interaction in knowledge collaboration refers to an interactive emergent dialogue in which knowledge is shared while it is protected, requiring deep appraisals of each others’ actions in order to determine how each action may influence the outcomes of the collaboration. Vigilant interactions are critical in online knowledge collaborations under ambivalent relationships where users collaborate to gain benefits but at the same time protect to avoid harm from perceived vulnerabilities. Vigilant interactions can take place on discussion boards, open source development, wiki sites, social media sites, and online knowledge management systems and thus is a rich research area for information systems researchers. Three elements of vigilant interactions are described: trust asymmetry, deception and novelty. Each of these elements challenges prevailing theory-based assumptions about how people collaborate online. The study of vigilant interaction, then, has the potential to provide insight on how these elements can be managed by participants in a manner that allows knowledge sharing to proceed without harm.