Social Network Sites and Knowledge Transfer: An Urban Perspective

This article surveys the literature to explore whether and how internet technologies and applications such as social network sites (SNS) support social interactions and, through them, knowledge transfers at different spatial scales and settings. By employing concepts from economic geography and combining them with ideas and empirics from urban sociology, business, and media studies, this article informs urban thinking about the underpinning mechanisms behind SNS-mediated vis-à-vis face-to-face knowledge-related interactions and how they mirror but also challenge established spatial patterns of knowledge spillovers.