The Coronavirus Is Democratizing Knowledge

Natalie Chyi wrote for Wired on how the COVID-19 pandemic is empowering people and communities to become co-creators and co-distributors of essential knowledge.

The Covid-19 pandemic has spurred what’s often called an infodemic, or the alarming spread of harmful information online. But this narrative misses the ways in which the Covid-19 crisis is simultaneously driving groups and individuals to collaboratively generate huge amounts of useful, public knowledge.

In a race to create and share resources to weather the pandemic's challenges, communities have ushered in a golden age of a little-known economic concept: the knowledge commons. Popularized by political economist Elinor Ostrom and researcher Charlotte Hess, the term refers to an accessible repository of knowledge, usually focused on specific topics, that is collectively owned and governed by a community for mutual gain. Many knowledge commons, such as Wikipedia, GitHub, and SSRN, existed before the pandemic. But in the last ten weeks, the creation and use of knowledge commons has exploded.

Read about these new knowledge commons, and their importance, here.