Knowledge coordination in a semi-closed IM network under time-critical conditions: Making distributed expertise actionable

Semi-closed, cross-organizational instant messaging (IM) environments combine bounded membership with rapid communication across organizational boundaries. Building on research showing that expertise is distributed across professional networks, this study examines how journalists describe the coordination through which dispersed knowledge becomes collectively usable under time-critical conditions. A cross-organizational LINE group comprising Taiwanese television political journalists provides a revelatory case of digitally mediated epistemic coordination. Drawing on qualitative interviews with twelve participants across two experience cohorts, the study analytically reconstructs three interrelated mechanisms from recurrent patterns in participants’ accounts: the situational redistribution of epistemic authority, the externalization of tacit reasoning into interpretable cues, and the distributed assembly of interpretive support. The first author’s long-term insider experience served as interpretive context rather than independent evidence. Together, these mechanisms characterize digitally mediated epistemic coordination in the focal case: across participants’ accounts, distributed expertise became visible, evaluable, and actionable under time pressure. Participants also retrospectively linked repeated participation in such coordination to shifts in professional practice, describing sustained exposure to peers’ reasoning and evaluative criteria as contributing to the recalibration of their interpretive orientations. Taken together, the findings portray the focal LINE group as a consequential infrastructure for professional knowledge coordination under time-critical conditions.