Abstract:

The data for this research was collected from Zhihu, which is a famous online Q&A community in China. Content analysis and social network analysis were used to discuss about users' behavior of knowledge sharing and dissemination in this research. The results suggested that, firstly, the community exhibited the traits of a small world and powerlaw distribution. Secondly, higher outdegree members had more prestige and attracted more followers. And higher indegree members were accustom to read answers and communicate with others, so that they are the promoters of knowledge building and benefited from knowledge sharing. Finally, from the view of contents, the questions were diversified, and the answers were inclined to personalized and sociability.

Keywords: Virtual community, Social network analysis, Zhihu, Knowledge sharing, Knowledge dissemination