Complexity and Social Networks Blog

5 September 2008

Events/Announcements

Technology

Honest Signals

Sandy Pentland has written a new book on our group's research from the past 5 years: Honest Signals. Here's a summary:

How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer, writes Sandy Pentland in Honest Signals, is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network. Biologically based "honest signaling," evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, offers an unmatched window into our intentions, goals, and values. If we understand this ancient channel of communication, Pentland claims, we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates.

Pentland, an MIT professor, has used a specially designed digital sensor worn like an ID badge--a "sociometer"--to monitor and analyze the back-and-forth patterns of signaling among groups of people. He and his researchers found that this second channel of communication, revolving not around words but around social relations, profoundly influences major decisions in our lives--even though we are largely unaware of it. Pentland presents the scientific background necessary for understanding this form of communication, applies it to examples of group behavior in real organizations, and shows how by "reading" our social networks we can become more successful at pitching an idea, getting a job, or closing a deal. Using this "network intelligence" theory of social signaling, Pentland describes how we can harness the intelligence of our social network to become better managers, workers, and communicators.

I've read through an early edition, and in contrast to other pop science books like Freakanomics and Predictably Irrational (both of which are interesting reads), Honest Signals has the scientific details of the experiments that it talks about, in the form of a thorough 50-page appendix. For anyone interested in how sensing technology will change business and the sciences or who's interested in the how people actually interact with each other, this is a must read.

By Ben Waber | 8:48 AM | Comments (0)

19 August 2008

Network panels at the political science meetings

As many readers of this blog know, the political science meetings come to Boston the week after next. As I have mentioned before, there is an emerging interest in networks in political science. My co-conspirator in leading the "Political Networks" initiative, James Fowler, compiled a list of panels at APSA with network-related themes. I thought this might be of interest to readers of the blog. If you have additional panels/papers to suggest, please add as comments.

APSA network panels

*** Thursday, Aug 28, 8:00 AM

21-9 Neighbors, Networks, and Issues in Conflict Onset and Expansion: Uncovering the Complexity of World Politics

The ConflictSpace Project: Testing Complex Models of the Diffusion of War
Paul F. Diehl
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, pdiehl@uiuc.edu
John A. Vasquez
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, vasqueja@uiuc.edu
Colin Flint
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, flint@uiuc.edu
Jürgen Scheffran
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, scheffra@uiuc.edu

*** Thursday, Aug 28, 10:15 AM

17-4 / 18-1 Civilizational Polities in Domestic and International Politics (1)

Islam Between Civilization and Civil Societies: The Pervasive If Ambiguous Role of Networks and Minorities in Rethinking the Ummah Today
Bruce Bennett Lawrence
Duke University, bruce.bbl@gmail.com

22-16 Congress: Getting There Is Half the Battle

Passing the Bucks: The Member-to-Member Contribution Network in Congress
Brendan Nyhan
Duke University, bjn3@duke.edu
Michael Tofias
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, tofias@uwm.edu

*** Thursday, Aug 28, 2:00 PM

7-12 / 15-9 City Hall, Local Investment Credits and Clientelism: Comparative Historical Analysis of Local Party Dominance in Post-War France, Italy and Japan

Explaining Varied Historical Paths to Local Party Dominance in France: Allocation Patterns of Local Investment Credits and Their Impacts on Party Networks
Yohei Nakayama
University of Tokyo, y-naka@j.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Farewell to the Odd Twins? The Historical Transformation of Clientelistic Political Networks in Postwar Italy and Japan
Takeshi Ito
Senshu University, tito@isc.senshu-u.ac.jp
Masako Suginohara
Sophia University, ms828@goo.jp

36-31 / 38-3 Heterogeneity in Social Networks: Genes, the Internet, Information, and Participation

Online Groups and Networks: Does the Internet Facilitate Exposure to Political Disagreement?
Diana C. Mutz
University of Pennsylvania, mutz@sas.upenn.edu
Magdalena Elzbieta Wojcieszak
University of Pennsylvania, magdalena@asc.upenn.edu

Availability and the Centrality of Experts in the communication of political information
Robert Huckfeldt
University of California, Davis, rhuckfeldt@ucdavis.edu
T.K. Ahn
Florida State University, tahn@fsu.edu
John Barry Ryan
University of California, Davis, jbrryan@ucdavis.edu

Social Expertise and Individual Action
Scott D. McClurg
Southern Illinois University, mcclurg@siu.edu

Do Social Networks Mediate the Influence of Genes on Political Behavior?
James H. Fowler
University of California, San Diego, jhfowler@ucsd.edu

38-17 / 40-1 Social Networking and the Future of Politics and Administration

The Effects of Social Networking Websites and Youth Voter Participation
Kimberly D. Martin
University of Florida, kmartin@polisci.ufl.edu
Hans Schmeisser
University of Florida, hans42@ufl.edu

Facebook Reception: Measuring the Effectiveness of User Generated Political Ads
Leticia Bode
University of Wisconsin, Madison, lbode@wisc.edu

What Is a Social Network Worth? Facebook and Vote Share in the 2008 Presidential Primaries
Christine B. Williams
Bentley College, cwilliams@bentley.edu

Text Me When You Get There: Examining the Rising Use of Modern Communication Technology as a Resource for Latino Political Mobilization
Corinna A. Reyes
University of California, Santa Barbara

Cyber-Dissidents and Blogging as Resistance: The Internet and Opposition to Authoritarian and Oppressive Regimes
James Stanyer
Loughborough University, j.stanyer@lboro.ac.uk

PS 2 Divisions 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31

The Influence of Social Networks in the Representation of Noncitizen Immigrants
Grace Cho
University of Michigan, chog@umich.edu

Using Airports to Develop a Framework for Accountability in Governance Networks
Russell W. Mills
Kent State University, rmills2@kent.edu

Social Reinforcement, Increasing Return, and the Evolution of Policy Networks
Cheng-Lung Wang
National University of Singapore, polwcl@nus.edu.sg

Hustle and Flow: A Social Network Analysis of the American Federal Judiciary
Daniel Martin Katz
University of Michigan, dmartink@umich.edu
Derek Stafford
University of Michigan, dstaff@umich.edu

*** Thursday, Aug 28, 4:15 PM

29-12 / 22-24 Issues in State Legislatures

Political Networks and the Impact of Term Limits
Delia Bailey
Washington University, St. Louis
Betsy Sinclair
University of Chicago, betsy@uchicago.edu

38-6 Discussion, Polarization and Civicness: The Role of Political Talk in Campaigns

Developing Discourse? Citizen Involvement, Elite Polarization and the European Public Sphere
Chiara Jasson
London School of Economics, chiaraj@lse.ac.uk

Competition and Opposition in Social Networks: Does Disagreement Discourage Voter Turnout?
Lilach Nir
Hebrew University, lnir@mscc.huji.ac.il

Gender and Political Discussion Networks
Erin Cassese
West Virginia University, erin.cassese@mail.wvu.edu

*** Friday, Aug 29, 8:00 AM

6-3 Property Rights

Networks and Property Rights: Exploring the Determinants of Profit Reinvestment
Iva Bozovic
University of Southern California, bozovic@usc.edu

22-28 / 35-16 Influencing Government

Polarizers or Consensus Builders? Interest Group Coalitions in Electoral and Legislative Networks
Matt Grossmann
Michigan State University, matthewg9@gmail.com
Casey Byrne Dominguez
University of San Diego, caseydominguez@sandiego.edu

38-18 / 40-2 The Electoral Impact of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 and the Mainstream Media: How Facebook, MySpace and YouTube Popularity Drive Media Coverage
Kevin Jay Wallsten
University of California, Berkeley, wallsten@uclink.berkeley.edu

MyFaceTube Politics: Assessing the Impact of Social Networking Websites on the Political Attitudes and Knowledge of Young Adults During the Early 2008 Presidential Primary Season
Jody C Baumgartner
East Carolina University, jodyb@jodyb.net
Jonathan S. Morris
East Carolina University, morrisj@ecu.edu

39-6 The Role of Networks in Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics

The Determinants of Research Collaboration: The Impacts of Work Environment
Wan-Ling Huang
University of Illinois at Chicago, whuang24@uic.edu
Eric Welch
University of Illinois, Chicago, ewwelch@uic.edu

Ideology Versus Power as Drivers of Network Cohesion: The Case of Regional Planning
Adam Henry
Harvard University, adam_henry@ksg.harvard.edu
Mark N. Lubell
University of California, Davis, mnlubell@ucdavis.edu
Mike C. McCoy
University of California, Davis, mcmccoy@ucdavis.edu

Exploring the Role of Partnerships for Sustainable ICT Projects to Bridge the Digital Divide
Laura Hosman
University of California, Berkeley, hosman@berkeley.edu

Business Networks in Environmental Politics: The Case of China
Sangbum Shin
Yonsei University, sshin@yonsei.ac.kr

Scientific and Expert Communities in Chinese Foreign Relations
Alanna Krolikowski
University of Toronto, alanna.krolikowski@utoronto.ca

*** Friday, Aug 29, 10:15 AM

4-2 Social Context and Identity

Modeling and Measuring Network-Based Social Capital
Meredith Rolfe
University of Oxford, meredith.rolfe@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

18-5 / 21-3 Alliances

Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Network Structure and Alliance Pathologies
Peter M. Li
National University of Singapore, pollpm@nus.edu.sg

35-18 Parties as Social Networks

527 Committees and the Political Party Network
David A. Dulio
Oakland University, ddulio@oakland.edu
Richard M. Skinner
Allegheny College, rskinner@allegheny.edu
Seth E. Masket
University of Denver, smasket@du.edu

Party Polarization in Congress: A Social Networking Approach
Andrew Waugh
University of California, San Diego, aswaugh@ucsd.edu

Multiple Affiliation and Ideological Consistency in Post-Reform Italy
Jessica Robinson Preece
University of California, Los Angeles, jrp68@ucla.edu

*** Friday, Aug 29, 2:00 PM

12-11 Distributive Politics of Developing Countries

How Many Clients Does it Take to Win an Election? Estimating the Size and Structure of Political Networks in Argentina and Chile
Maria Victoria Murillo
Columbia University, mm2140@columbia.edu
Ernesto F. Calvo
University of Houston, ecalvo@uh.edu

16-4 / 17-1 Network Analysis for International Relations (1): Theory

Markets, Hierarchies, and Networks: An Agent-Based Organizational Ecology
Danielle Jung
University of California, San Diego
David A. Lake
University of California, San Diego, dlake@ucsd.edu

Social Network Analysis
Michael D. Ward
University of Washington, mdw@u.washington.edu
Katherine Stovel
University of Washington, stovel@u.washington.edu

Network Analysis for International Relations
Emilie Marie Hafner-Burton
Princeton University, ehafner@princeton.edu
Alexander Montgomery
Reed College, ahm@reed.edu

Network Theory and the Relational Turn
Daniel H. Nexon
Georgetown University, dhn2@georgetown.edu

22-11 Legislative Deliberation, Debate, and Deception

Deliberation and Participation: A Deliberative Field Experiment
Kevin M. Esterling
University of California, Riverside, kevin.esterling@ucr.edu
David Lazer
Harvard University, David_Lazer@harvard.edu
Michael Neblo
Ohio State University, neblo.1@osu.edu

28-8 Federalism and Contemporary Challenges: Responses and Perceptions

Emergency Management: Gauging the Quality of Public and Private Sector Networks
Kiki Caruson
University of South Florida, kcaruson@cas.usf.edu
Susan A. MacManus
University of South Florida, samacmanus@aol.com

PS 4 Divisions 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21

Seeking New Opportunities: Global Networks and Environmental Governance in Japan and Korea
Yooil Bae
Singapore Management University, yooilbae@smu.edu.sg

*** Friday, Aug 29, 4:15 PM

8-11 / 16-5 Network Analysis for International Relations (2): Empirics

Convergence, Divergence, and Networks in the Age of Globalization: A Social Network Analysis Approach
Xun Cao
Princeton University, caox@essex.ac.uk

International Migration Flows and its Political Sources: A Network Analysis
Christian Breunig
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Xun Cao
Princeton University, caox@essex.ac.uk
Adam Luedtke
University of Utah, adamluedtke@yahoo.com

Trade Networks and the Politics of Cooperation and Conflict
Han Dorussen
University of Essex, hdorus@essex.ac.uk
Hugh Ward
University of Essex, hugh@essex.ac.uk

Intergovernmental Organizations and Global Isomorphism: The Case of Democracy
Magnus Torfason
Colombia Business School, mtt2108@columbia.edu
Paul Ingram
Columbia University, pi17@columbia.edu

When Country Interdependence is More Than Just a Nuisance: The Longitudinal Network Analysis Approach
Mark A. Pickup
University of Oxford, mark.pickup@gmail.com
Mark S. Manger
McGill University, mark.manger@mcgill.ca
Tom Snijders
University of Oxford, Tom.Snijders@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

*** Saturday, Aug 30, 8:00 AM

12-15 Governance in Transition Countries: What Role for Private Actors?

Governing Security in Weak Postcolonial States: Private Self-Help, Partnership Policing and Shadow Networks of Public-Private Rule
Jana Hoenke
Freie Universität Berlin, hoenke@zedat.fu-berlin.de

24-7 Networking, Collaborating, and Getting Things Done

Measuring and Identifying Leadership in Public Sector Networks
Michael McGuire
Indiana University, mcguirem@indiana.edu
Chris Silvia
Indiana University, cesilvia@indiana.edu

Doing Their Best: Municipalities' Struggle to Provide Social Services in Collaboration with the Non-Profit and Business Sectors
Rona Stein
Tel-Aviv University, rona.stein@gmail.com
Gila Menahem
Tel Aviv University, gilam@post.tau.ac.il

Networking Organizations in a Fragmented Policy System: How Do Collaborative Proposals Succeed in Obtaining Governmental Support?
Alfredo Ramiro Berardo
University of Arizona, berardo@email.arizona.edu

Beware of Managers Not Bearing Gifts: How Management Capacity Augments the Impact of Managerial Networking
Kenneth J. Meier
Texas A&M University, kmeier@polisci.tamu.edu
Laurence J. O'Toole
University of Georgia, cmsotool@uga.edu

*** Saturday, Aug 30, 10:15 AM

21-11 / 39-1 International Environmental Conflict and Cooperation: Evidence from New Data

What You See is What You Want: The Evolution of Monitoring Networks for Water Quality in Europe
Thomas C. Bernauer
ETH Zurich, thbe0520@ethz.ch
Anna Kalbhenn
ETH Zurich, kalbhenn@ir.gess.ethz.ch

PS 5 Divisions 5, 6, 7, 8, 38, 41, 44, 46, and 47

Network Interdependencies and Specification of Weight Matrices: A Sptial-Network Analysis of Top Corporate Tax Rates
Xun Cao
Princeton University, caox@essex.ac.uk

Persistent Patterns of International Militarized Rivalries: A Network Approach to International Rivalries
Jinyoung Kim
University of Washington, Seattle, kjinyn@u.washington.edu

Regional Integration of Trade and Intergovernmental Administrative Networks: Comparing OLS-Regression, Spatially Lagged Models and Spatial Error Model
Paul W. Thurner
University of Mannheim, paul.thurner@mzes.uni-mannheim.de

When Social Networks Undermine Democracy: Nazi Paramilitaries and the Fall of the Weimar Republic
Vincent Boutet-Lehouillier
University of Wisconsin-Madison, boutetlehoui@wisc.edu

The Illicit Arms Trade: Network Data and Analysis
David Kinsella
Portland State University, kinsella@pdx.edu

*** Saturday, Aug 30, 2:00 PM

5-15 / 33-12 Religion and Political Psychology

Attitude Formation within Political and Religious Networks
Carrie Konold
University of Michigan, ckonold@umich.edu

44-9 Informal Mechanisms Underlying Regime Stability: Comparative Evidence from the Middle East

Resilient Authoritarianism in Syria: The Role of Informal State-Business Networks
Bassam Haddad
George Mason University, bhaddad@sju.edu

*** Saturday, Aug 30, 4:15 PM

24-14 / 40-8 Blogging, eGovernment, and Public Administration

Agency-Related Blogs as Forums for Policy Networks
Julianne Mahler
George Mason University, jmahler@gmu.edu
Priscilla M. Regan
George Mason University, pregan@gmu.edu

*** Sunday, Aug 31, 8:00 AM

12-20 Violence and the Emergence of Ethnic Identity: Cleavage Construction, Conflict and Peace in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Dismantling Ethnic Frames via Networks: Defusing Separatism via Brokerage and Network Clientalism
Sherrill Stroschein
University College, London, s.stroschein@ucl.ac.uk

24-5 / 28-1 States and Feds: Complexities of Intergovernmental Management

Interstate Cooperation: Interstate Compacts and the Influence of Networks
Kathleen M. Hale
Auburn University, halekat@auburn.edu
Ramona S. McNeal
University of Northern Iowa, mcnealr@uni.edu

Regional Governance and Intergovernmental Inequality: Impacts of Collaborative Networks on Inter-Local Inequality in Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis Regions
Joo Hun Lee
University of Pittsburgh, jules529@gmail.com

38-8 Political Communication, Globalization, and Global Media Environments

Cosmopolitanism and U.S. Cities in the Global City Network
Andrew Rojecki
University of Illinois, Chicago, arojecki@uic.edu

39-10 / 40-6 Global Multistakeholder Networked Governance for Information and Communication Technology Policy

Network Governance, Information Technology and Global Religion
Michel Laguerre
University of California, Berkeley, bcgit@berkeley.edu

Communication Technology, Repressive Hierarchies and Defiant Networks: Is the State or Civil Society Winning the Information Race?
Patrick Meier
Tufts University, patrick.meier@tufts.edu

By David Lazer | 9:51 PM | Comments (0)

10 August 2008

Current Trends

FFF? (Facebook friends forever?)

I recently picked up my oldest daughter from immersion Chinese camp in Vermont (an interesting statement in itself about global networks). It was striking to me that as soon as she got home, she got on Facebook to friend many of the kids she got to know in camp. This was quite a contrast to my own experiences in high school and college (fairly typical of my cohort), when intense, immersive social experiences for the Summer almost never yielded friendships that lasted beyond. I wonder what the long run effects of Facebook and related sites/technologies will be? Do they make friendships stickier? There are a few reasons why they might. First, the technology is designed (e.g., through "status updates") to remind you about your "friends." You will still see status updates pop up on someone you friended years later. Second, Facebook acts as a self-updating address book. For example, when all of the kids in my daughter's camp cohort go off to college, they will update their profiles accordingly. Facebook thus greatly facilitates search--search based on finding a particular friend, or finding friends in particular locations. E.g., will my daughter, years from now, move to some town, and notice that someone she went to camp with in high school is there, and resume that latent friendship? In my generation that would have been implausible; for the Facebook generation, I suspect it will be rather different.

This yields an interesting, researchable question for some reader out there. One could imagine a survey of people, say in their late 20's, asking how many were still friends with people they met in high school, as well as people they met during high school but not in high school. If one could do repeated cross sections over the next decade, the question is whether there is a sharp disjuncture at the point that Facebook became near universal.

By David Lazer | 8:24 AM | Comments (8)

4 August 2008

Events/Announcements

Save the data! the Dataverse Network initiative

I recently made an effort to track down the data from Theodore Newcomb's classic work on The Acquaintance Process. These were network and attitudinal data he collected from incoming students at the University of Michigan in the 1950s. These were unique, and costly data to collect. The network data were preserved by a student in a dissertation, and are now immortalized (?) in the data included with the UCINET software. However, to someone like me interested in how networks and people co-evolve (see my 2001 JMS paper on "The coevolution of individual and network"), having the attitudinal data over time is what made the data valuable.

After having retrieved the same dissertation, and spoken to Ken Frank, who had had similar thoughts some years ago and had actually dug through archives at Michigan, my sad conclusion is that these rich, unique, expensive, irreplaceable data are simply gone. (I am happy to be disabused of this notion if someone can prove I am wrong.)

This was terribly unfortunate, from my immediate perspective, because I had some need to replicate some findings with longitudinal data I had recently collected on networks and political attitudes, and this was one of the few data sets that fit the bill (in fact, I have not found _any_ other good longitudinal data sets on whole networks and political attitudes-- again, happy to find out that I am wrong about that).

The broader lesson I want to convey is that it is important to make your data publicly available. And I think this is especially important for (generally) micro, whole network data sets, because there are necessarily concerns about replication and external validity. There are concerns about replication, because of the possibility, esp with limited N's, that results were over-fitted to the particular data set. There are concerns about external validity, because even if the results are a fair representation of the data, there may be some quirk about the particular setting driving results.

So: it would be enormously valuable to be able to reach into a vast archive of all social network data sets ever gathered and, given appropriate variables, etc, replicate a set of findings (or not) across multiple data sets. (In fact, I think that such built in replication should be de rigeur in published studies of micro settings. But that's a story for another day.)

That is simply not possible now. And data are dying every day, as files get thrown out, people's memories fade, etc. Say, if one went to social network research published in ASQ from the 1990s, how many of those data sets are publicly available? I would bet close to zero. How many could be retrieved in some fashion and made available? Not many, I think. And this would be far worse as one looks further back in time.

There are, of course, some centralized depositories of social science data (most notably, ICPSR). But IQSS has recently developed a new model of preserving data, which is really around creating an infrastructure (the "Dataverse") to allow decentralized mechanisms for data sharing, and one that I think is "incentive compatible" with getting some credit for creating a public good. (In fact, more should be done to recognize good data, and people who collect good data; again, a story for another day.)

[An addendum to original post, the network workbench initiative offers another bottom up type of model to save network data, via wiki.]

The remainder of this post is excerpted from an e-mail from Gary King, describing the project:

For those who have collected research data and made it available to others, its nice when people thank you. But it would be nicer to receive formal scholarly citation credit and web visibility for your hard work. The Dataverse Network project is designed to get you that credit and visibility.

The idea is to give you a free "dataverse" (your view of the universe of data) -- which is a virtual archive where you can store, permanently preserve, and distribute your data (or list data from other dataverses) with everyone or only those you approve. Your dataverse is branded as yours, with the look and feel of your web site and on your web site, but since it is served out by an installation of the Dataverse Network at Harvard you needn't install any software or hardware. Some other features include:

* Safe and permanent data storage in preservation format branded
as yours.
* No need to translate data when statistical software formats change.
* Can be easily re-branded if you move institutions, but either way
will never be lost.
* Formal citation credit for your data, including a globally unique
identifier and universal numeric fingerprint.
* Establish an unbreakable link between your data and related
published work.
* Easy ways for others to find your data and associated scholarship.
* Share your data with everyone, or those who sign your licensing
agreement, or only individuals or groups you approve.
* Allow users to subset, recode, and download your data in any format
* Run many advanced statistical methods via a GUI on-line.

An interesting but under-appreciated fact is that if you are at an institution that receives federal funding, and you share research data or put it on your web site without prior IRB approval, you are violating federal regulations. (This includes any research data, even that compiled from information in the public domain, from IRB-approved research protocols, or from any other source.) To avoid this problem, the Dataverse Network has automated the IRB data approval process, and so if you have a dataverse in most cases going to the IRB is unnecessary.

For an example, go to my homepage at http://gking.harvard.edu and click on dataverse. To get your own dataverse, go to the IQSS Dataverse Network, http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu. For more information on our open source Dataverse Network project, see http://TheData.org.

By David Lazer | 10:09 PM | Comments (0)

Societal Networks

Computing Culture: National Communication Logs

Over 3 billion people carry mobile telephones, which automatically capture behavioral data and store it in service provider databases around the world. The different types of captured data can provide insight into different cultures. I have an upcoming article in IEEE Intelligent Systems describing how examples from a variety of societies and hundreds of millions of individuals illustrate how phones can serve as a cultural lens, improving our understanding of social networks, outlier events, and a culture’s pace of life. It is a bit of an overview piece describing mostly future work, but hopefully it provides a good starting point for discussion.

Nathan Eagle. Behavioral Inference Across Cultures: Using Telephones as a
Cultural Lens, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2008, Vol 23 (4), pp. 60-62. PDF

By Nathan Eagle | 10:05 AM | Comments (2)

31 July 2008

Events/Announcements

Paper on voluntary engagement now downloadable from this site

A follow-up on my previous entry: Thanks to some very attentive folks I noticed that it's rather cumbersome to access our paper from the publisher's website, so now you can download a copy here.

By Maria Binz-Scharf | 2:11 PM | Comments (0)

Events/Announcements

Knowledge Sharing

Published: Voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing

Ines Mergel, David Lazer and I have a paper out in the International Journal of Learning and Change on voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing. Based on data from our study of forensic scientists in government crime labs, we investigated why individuals make the time and effort to answer questions directed at them. In a multi-level framework we identify several influencing factors at the individual, relational, group, and informational level. Here's the abstract:

Knowledge is essential for the functioning of every social system, especially for professionals in knowledge-intensive organisations. Since individuals do not possess all the work-related knowledge that they require, they turn to others in search for that knowledge. While prior research has mainly focused on antecedents and consequences of knowledge sharing and understanding why people do not share knowledge, less is known why people provide knowledge, and what conditions trigger voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing. Our article addresses this gap by proposing a multi-level framework for voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing: individual, relational, group, and informational. We provide illustrations from a particular knowledge-intensive community, DNA forensic scientists who work at public laboratories.

A pdf version is available from the Inderscience website. Please contact me directly if you'd like a copy and have difficulty accessing the online pdf version.

By Maria Binz-Scharf | 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

21 July 2008

SN in the news

Facebook vs MySpace

In David Carr's column "The Media Equation" in today's (7/21/08) New York Times, he writes about the amazing growth of Facebook usage and visits. Facebook does indeed have its social — and business — prerogatives. The network platform is on a tear right now, achieving numerical parity with MySpace in global reach.

As Carr writes:

Last month, according to comScore, Facebook had 123.9 million unique visitors and 50.6 billion page views worldwide while MySpace had 114.6 million unique visitors and 45.4 billion page views. MySpace still dominates in the United States, but if my page is any indication, a lot of people who aren’t texting OMG about the guy sitting in the next booth feel a need to opt in to social media.

According to company executives, Facebook, which has over 80 million subscribers worldwide, doubled the number of subscribers under 35 last year, but it tripled the number of subscribers between 35 and 54. Early adopters of Facebook, which was the province of students until 2006, must wonder who let all the old guys in. Sometime in the next day or so, Facebook will unveil a major new design for the site, which users can opt-in to.

Facebook is indeed on a tear. One wonders what it's now worth ......

By Stan Wasserman | 8:14 PM | Comments (4)

11 July 2008

Events/Announcements

Diffusion experiment

This is a rather clever diffusion experiment, courtesy Matthieu Latapy. If you have a website, you can participate-- you just need to click "spread it" below, enter your url, retrieve the code that will put the image you see below on your website (please, no trackbacks here or to Latapy's website, btw).

FYI, the image you see is the diffusion path of the code, which should change as it spreads.

By David Lazer | 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

2 July 2008

SN in the news

Live by the netroots die by the netroots?

Interesting article in today's New York Times regarding the resistance Obama is experiencing from his supporters regarding his support of legislation to give immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration's wiretapping program. Notably, supporters are using the web-based platform created by the Obama campaign to protest his position. The interesting thing is that in creating a genuine capacity for supporters to collectively mobilize, the campaign has created something with some autonomy from the campaign. Thus, when Obama shifts from where supporters think he stood, there is the real potential for a backlash from those supporters, using the tools for collective action that the campaign created.

Of course, the challenge for Presidential candidates in balancing the base against the center, in moving from the primary to the general campaign is nothing new. However, the speed of the backlash from the grassroots, and the use of the campaign's own mobilization machinery, is novel.

Here are excerpts from the article:

Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters.

Thousands of them are now using the same grass-roots organizing tools previously mastered by the Obama campaign to organize a protest against his decision.
In recent days, more than 7,000 Obama supporters have organized on a social networking site on Mr. Obama’s own campaign Web site. They are calling on Mr. Obama to reverse his decision to endorse legislation supported by President Bush to expand the government’s domestic spying powers while also providing legal protection to the telecommunication companies that worked with the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

During the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But he has switched positions, and now supports a compromise hammered out between the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership. The bill is expected to come to a vote on the Senate floor next Tuesday. That decision, one of a number made by Mr. Obama in recent weeks intended to position him toward the political center as the general election campaign heats up, has brought him into serious conflict for the first time with liberal bloggers and commentators and his young supporters.

By David Lazer | 9:24 PM