Exploring Knowledge Needs in a Non-Profit Student Group – Discussing the Knowledge Sources, Pathways, and Users in a Newspaper Setting

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Fong, Pamela
  • Martin, Heather

• The purpose of this poster is to study the knowledge needs of non-profit student newspaper editors and offer Knowledge Management (KM) recommendations on existing systems. This poster is original research that explores non-profit student newspaper groups. The methodology used for this study was a knowledge audit using selectively transcribed semi-structured interviews, consultation of organizational website, and the framework of knowledge representations by Rathi, Forcier, and Givens (2014). Through the audit, the researchers discovered a Community of Practice (CoP) between editors, high usage of technology, and technology literacy,  and functional expertise of different individuals (Rathi, Forcier & Givens, 2014). One research limitation was that the researchers had no connection to the organization prior to the study. As well, not all editors from the organization were interviewed due to time restrictions. While the organization had a good foundation in KM, recommendations of fostering the existing CoP, have a stronger focus on training, capturing and customizing the existing knowledge of experts, and reflecting on the outcome of changes are suggested. Delving further, the population of editors were Millennials, who are digital natives and there is a habitus in the way they approached work. Moreover, there is limited information available on KM in a newspaper setting and no literature with a focus on editors. Unique, as well, is the situation in which yearly staff turnover is expected.

• Date created

  2015-02-06

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Knowledge management
  • Information behavior
  • Nonprofit organizations
  • Journalism, College

• Type of Item

  Conference/Workshop Poster

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R32R3NZ2K

• License

  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International