Too much information, too much uncertainty and all too fast...

Sound familiar?

We all have a need to make sense of change - to understand, to predict and to somehow be in control.

And as noted by John Todor, when the change is happening too fast, "we struggle to find understanding and value in change. When we do, it is psychologically rewarding and it enables us to derive experiential value from our new insights"

As a practitioner, who is always staggered at the number of people who want to participate in online communities - research on why this occurs will always get my attention...

The need for sense making appears to be a strong contributor to our need for social connectedness.

Research by Robert Kelly  of Carnegie Mellon University:

In 1986 when he asked people what percentage of the knowledge they needed to do their job was inside their own head, the average estimate was 75%. By 1997 the average estimate was below 20%.

In 2008, we can only imagine what this figure is...!

We are clearly dependent on others to unravel the explosion of knowledge: relationships are the essential medium.

However, for relationships to work there must be mutual trust - and not surprisingly, companies, brands&their representatives rank in the bottom third of trust scales.

Peers rank at the top of trust scales - because there is a shared perspective. Recommendations of friends or associates are contextually relevant.

And what social theorists call "weak tie relationships" are particularly important online - to populate the peer recommendations, reviews, voting etc that we come to trust over time. 

Having refreshed myself on this research -  I have made just a little more sense of what I am witnessing in online communities!

There is method in our collective madness!