Connected Action

Sociology and the Internet, Social Media, and Mobile Social Software

Talk at Israel Internet Association on February 22, 2010

March 11th, 2010 · 1 Comment

The Annual Meeting of the Israel Internet Association (http://www.isoc.org.il (English)) was held February 22-23 2010. I spoke at this year’s meeting: http://www.isoc.org.il/conf2010/agenda.php?lang=en
Part 1

Part 2

The previous year’s conference website is at: http://www.isoc.org.il/conf2009/program.php
The Israel Internet Association is the official Israeli Chapter of the Internet Society.  Their annual meeting is a central event of academics (sociologists, psychologists, [...]

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Tags: Conference · Industry · Measuring social media · NodeXL · Research · Social Media · Social network · Talks

University of Haifa and IBM Research talk on Social Media Networks, February 24, 2010

February 13th, 2010 · 2 Comments

After speaking at the Israel Internet Association conference February 22, I will speak at IBM Research in Haifa at an event co-sponsored by the University of Haifa Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the M.A. program in Sociology of Technology.  My hosts are Professor Gustavo Mesch from the university and Dr. Adam Perer from IBM [...]

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Tags: Collective Action · Connected Action · IBM · NodeXL · Research · Social Interaction · Social Media · Social Network Analysis · Social network · Talks · University · Visualization

Sparklines guide Dynamic Filters for social networks in NodeXL v.1.0.1.111

February 9th, 2010 · 2 Comments

Time for another NodeXL update: sparklines!  Sparklines are a nifty and compact way of displaying a line chart in a small area.
Setting dynamic filters in NodeXL has been somewhat like rummaging around in the dark: without a way to see the distribution beneath a filter the user only knows the max and min values, not [...]

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Tags: Metrics · NodeXL · Social Media · Social Network Analysis · Social network · Sociology · User interface · Visualization

Book in progress: “Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World”

January 30th, 2010 · 4 Comments

Along with Professors Ben Shneiderman (Computer Science/Human Computer Interaction Lab) and Derek Hansen (College of Information Studies) from the University of Maryland I am writing and editing a book about analyzing the social media networks that form whenever people link or reply to one another, favorite, rate, read, or edit data about other people or their objects.  Social media [...]

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Tags: Book · NodeXL · Research · Social Media · Social network · Visualization

Slides: NodeXL overview: social media network analysis

December 17th, 2009 · No Comments

Here is a recent slidedeck that provides an overview of NodeXL and social media network analysis.
2009 December NodeXL Overview
View more presentations from Marc Smith.

The deck illustrates the use of NodeXL to extract several social media networks from systems like twitter and facebook to generate maps of communities and identify people and objects in key locations.

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Tags: Collective Action · Connected Action · Data Mining · NodeXL · Research · Social Media · Social network · Twitter · Visualization

Book: Communities in Cyberspace – Ten Years Later

December 15th, 2009 · 4 Comments

When the late Peter Kollock and I published Communities in Cyberspace with Routledge in 1999 there were few broadband connections, no iPhones, and little WiFi.  Today, there is an ebook version of the book and Amazon sells a version for the Kindle, a device it was hard to even imagine when the book was written.  [...]

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Tags: Book · Collective Action · Common Goods · Community · Data Mining · Measuring social media · Metrics · Research · Social Media · Social Roles · Sociology

Video: Panel Discussion from November 19: Using Social Media to Grow and Market Your Business

December 13th, 2009 · No Comments

Video is now available from a panel hosted by the Women’s Affinity Group of O’Melveny & Myers’ Silicon Valley Office in Menlo Park on November 19th.  Along with Karla Spormann, President and CEO Tendo Communications, Martin Eberhard, Co-founder and former CEO Tesla Motors, Patrick Ewers, Founder, Mindmavin LLC.  We spoke about “Using Social Media to Grow [...]

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Tags: Measuring social media · NodeXL · Social Media · Social network · Talks

Workshop December 15th: Create your own twitter social network map

November 28th, 2009 · No Comments

On December 15th in Mountain View, California join me for lunch and a workshop on creating social media network diagrams!  We will provide a hands-on guide to creating maps of the collections of connections among people who tweet about various brands, topics, events, and concepts. Bring your own Windows/Office 2007 machine and we will set you [...]

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Tags: NodeXL · Social network · Sociology · Talks · Twitter · Visualization

Social Media Talks at Aachen University, December 7th & 8th

November 28th, 2009 · No Comments

After visiting the Oxford Internet Institute on December 4th, I will be visiting Aachen University to talk about social media network analysis this December 7th and 8th.

I will be visiting with my hosts, Zinayida Petrushyna and Ralf Klamma who have been doing insightful work exploring social media sites like Media Wikis and Wikipedia.  The Wiki Watcher [...]

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Tags: Aachen · Social Media · Social network · Talks · University

Video: Using NodeXL to map the “digg” mentioning Twitter population

November 11th, 2009 · 6 Comments

This is a brief demo video about NodeXL analyzing Twitter social network connections among a group of users who all mentioned the term “digg”.

2009 – November – NodeXL – Demo – Mapping Twitter Social Networks “Digg” from Marc Smith on Vimeo.
This is a good demonstration of several features in NodeXL: social media network importers (in [...]

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Tags: Community · Measuring social media · Metrics · NodeXL · Social Interaction · Social Media · Social network · Sociology · Twitter · Video · Visualization

Bernie Hogan’s Facebook Social Network Data Provider and Visualization toolkit

September 12th, 2009 · 1 Comment

My colleague at the Oxford Internet Institute, Bernie Hogan, is working on tools that collect personal Facebook network data and visualize the connections among your friends.
Here is an example: http://twitpic.com/9rvfq

It provides a good illustration of the ways a person’s social network is clumped into clusters built around life phases, workplaces, educational institutions, teams and locations.  [...]

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Tags: Data Mining · Facebook · Measuring social media · Social Roles · Social network · Sociology · Visualization

Recently, Stanford Media X Workshop – New Metrics for New Media: Analytics for Social Media and Virtual Worlds

September 12th, 2009 · No Comments

On August 5th and 6th I led a workshop with Martha Russell on social network analysis of social media as part of the Stanford Media X Summer Institute on New Metrics for New Media: Analytics for Social Media and Virtual Worlds this Summer.

New Metrics for New Media:  Analytics for Social Media and Virtual Worlds
Organizers:  Martha Russell, Marc [...]

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Tags: Community · Measuring social media · Metrics · NodeXL · Social Interaction · Social network · Sociology · Talks · Visualization

Book: E-Research: Transformation in Scholarly Practice

August 27th, 2009 · 2 Comments

A new book E-Research: Transformation in Scholarly Practice edited by Nicholas W. Jankowski on the ways social science research is being changed by the rise of social media has just been released by Routledge.  My colleagues and I contributed a chapter on the ways that information visualization of social media is a useful technique to [...]

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Tags: Book · Data Mining · Measuring social media · Metrics · Papers · Social Interaction · Social Media · Social Roles · Social network · Sociology

Paper in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication: Discussion Catalysts in Political Discussions

August 26th, 2009 · No Comments

2009 – JCMC- Discussion Catalysts – Himelboim, Gleave and Smith

JCMC Article: Discussion Catalysts

My co-authors Eric Gleave, from the University of Washington, Department of Sociology and Itai Himelboim, from the University of Georgia, Department of Communications, are pleased to note the publication of our paper “Discussion catalysts in online political discussions: Content importers and conversation starters“ in [...]

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Tags: Community · Metrics · Papers · Research · Social Media · Social Roles · Social network · Sociology

Paper: Reader-to-Leader Framework: Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Participation, Preece & Shneiderman

June 17th, 2009 · 3 Comments

I just read a new paper from Jennifer Preece and Ben Shneiderman that provides a nice framework for the ways people contribute at different rates to collective projects in general and social media on the Internet in particular.
Preece, Jennifer and Shneiderman, Ben (2009).  The Reader-to-Leader Framework: Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Participation, AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction [...]

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Tags: Collective Action · Common Goods · Community · Papers · Research · Social Interaction · Social Media · Social network · Sociology