Identifying cognitive authority in social networks: a conceptual framework

The popularization of online social networks has contributed to the appearance of new strategies that consider the relationship and interaction between people as a means to support information search and recommendation. The literature has indicated that a cognitive authority produces and shares information of better quality and relevance for those who recognizes that authority, being a promising concept to support information retrieval and quality judgement on the web. However, identifying such authorities is still a challenge. In this paper, we introduce the idAuthority: a conceptual framework to support the identification of cognitive authorities in social networks. To illustrate its application in a practical context, we instantiate the framework for a real online social network of Inclusive Education teachers, and evaluate its results with a group of six teachers. The results indicate the idAuthority as a promising framework to support the creation of mechanisms for identifying cognitive authorities in specific social networks.