Week 5 – Internet Governance

The knowledge that accumulates online is vast due to the highly user-driven nature of the internet. Users can navigate themselves in this prodigious pool of data thanks to the structure of folksonomy.

Folksonomy is the classification of knowledge created by users. For instance, the tagging system on blogs allows users to attribute certain keywords to their blog entries to help their readers find entries related to specific topics/keywords. Folksonomy derives its meaning from the word “folk,” referring to the traditional knowledge passed down in generations of family groups. The latter part of the term refers to classification and organization, much like the term taxonomy, which indicates a system of classification. So given that the data is contributed by users, who themselves classify the data, the structure of folksonomy is very much determined by the content added by internet users.

Folksonomy extends itself to the process of globalization in the sense that “folk” knowledge used to be restricted to family/community generations in a specific region. It can now be shared with an international audience – the global internet community. In addition to this global audience, “folk” knowledge could also be examined in relation to the origins or the nascent stages of any ideas being developed over time and shared online.