Social Media Technologies for Achieving Knowledge Management Amongst Older Adult Communities

Social media technologies have a number of characteristics that may suit information access and informal knowledge management by older adults, and there is a rapid uptake of these technologies by this demographic. Based on the characteristics of social media technologies and previous findings of online knowledge management, we introduce a novel framework for achieving social media-based knowledge management suited to older adult communities. The framework involves several key aspects and requirements: public peer-to-peer sharing of information, evaluation of content amongst peers, the “push” nature of these technologies, ease-of-use through simple interfaces, affordability, platforms that are extensible to support a wide range of information types, a self-organizing information dissemination network, and a human-based peer trust network. We conducted a six-month trial of 150 participants using Facebook, Twitter and Skype to determine their perceptions and preferences in relation to using these social technologies. We found that in the majority, the views of the older adult participants were well matched to the requirements for achieving social media-based knowledge management, identified in the framework. In addition, we discuss the implications of the findings for the implementation of future social media-based knowledge management systems.