Pew Internet and Social Media Research Foundation Report: Six kinds of social media networks in Twitter

20FebMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Working together, the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the Social Media Research Foundation has published a report on the variations in social media crowd structures documented by network analysis and visualization of Twitter. The report is titled:

Mapping Twitter Topic Networks:
From Polarized Crowds to Community Clusters

The paper documents the distinct patterns of connection that emerge when people talk to one another using social media services like Twitter. The paper includes six network visualizations that clearly demonstrate the diverse ways people connect to people when using online tools.

The report was produced by Marc Smith from the Social Media Research Foundation, Lee Rainie from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, Itai Himelboim professor of communications at the University of Georgia, and Ben Shneiderman professor of computer science from the University of Maryland.

ASA 2011 – Las Vegas, NV: August 20-23 – Sociologists present on the social uses and effects of information technology

20AugMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

2011 ASA meetings are being held in Las Vega, Nevada. Several sessions are related to the study of the social uses and effects of information technology are hosted by the Communications and Information Technology Section of the American Sociological Association (CITASA).

These are the connections among the people who recently tweeted the term “ASA2011” on 18 August 2011.

Several papers and panels related to the sociology of the internet will take place:

Saturday, Aug 20 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm

124. Section on Sociology of Law Paper Session. Privacy in the Digital Age: Law, Culture, and Contention I (co-sponsored with the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements and Section on Communication and Information Technology)

Monday, Aug 22 – 8:30-9:30AM Roundtables

338. Section on Communication and Information Technology Roundtable Session

Monday, Aug 22 – 9:30-10:10AM Business and Awards Ceremony

(immediately follows roundtables)

Monday, Aug 22 – 10:30AM – 12:10PM

376. Section on Communication and Information Technology Invited Session. Social Media in Community Action and Social Change

Monday, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm

419. Section on Communication and Information Technology Paper Session. New Media Frontiers: Youth and New Media

Monday, Aug 22 – 5:00-7:00PM, Section Reception, hotel suite, Caesars Palace

Location to be announced at all CITASA sessions and meetings.

Tuesday has the main day of panels and talks:

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2011 – Communities and Technologies Conference – 29 June – 2 July 2011, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

01MayMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

29 June – 2 July 2011
Queensland University of Technology

Tweet with the hashtag #ct2011

http://ct2011.urbaninformatics.net/

C&T 2011 OVERVIEW

The biennial Communities and Technologies (C&T) conference is the premier international forum for stimulating scholarly debate and disseminating research on the complex connections between communities – both physical and virtual – and information and communication technologies.

C&T 2011 welcomes participation from researchers, designers, educators, industry, and students from the many disciplines and perspectives bearing on the interaction between community and technology, including architecture, arts, business, design, economics, education, engineering, ergonomics, information technology, geography, health, humanities, law, media and communication studies, and social sciences. The conference program will include competitively selected, peer-reviewed papers, as well as pre-conference workshops, a doctoral consortium, and invited keynote and panel speakers.

Marcus Foth
Conference Chair

IMPORTANT DATES
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July 13-14, 2011 – Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Program: NodeXL Workshop

27AprMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

I will be speaking at the Oxford Internet Institute on July 13 and 14, 2011 as part of the Summer Doctoral Program.

I will speak about the use of social network analysis and visualization techniques to analyze and understand social media.

The Summer Doctoral Program is designed to

…bring together advanced doctoral students engaged in dissertation research relating to the Internet and other ICTs. By sharing their work and learning from leading academics in the field, students can enhance the quality and significance of their thesis research and create a peer network of excellent young researchers.

The 2011 Summer Doctoral Programme will draw substantially upon the OII’s research strengths and will involve participation from many of our faculty, together with colleagues from other partner institutions. It will emphasise methodological innovation and good practice in research design, and will expose students to the benefits of discussing their research in a multi-disciplinary teaching environment.”

Video: Talk at Personal Digital Archives 2011 at the Internet Archive (24 February 2011)

21MarMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

I gave a talk at the Personal Digital Archives conference held at the Internet Archive in San Francisco, California on 24 February 2011. The videos of the talks at the event are now available from the Internet Archive web site.

Here is a NodeXL map of the connections among the people who tweeted the term PDA2011 OR PDA11:

The top most between people in this graph were: @anarchivist, @blefurgy, @naypinya, @rodanda, @jeffubois, @scottros, @evancaroll, @kevinmarks, @vurayav, and @sshreeves.

Here is the video from my talk:

30 April 2010, Friday – Workshop: Social Media Network Analysis: Next Practices in Social Network Analysis, Tools and Media

26AprMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

I will present a workshop on social media network analysis at the next Network Singularity event at Fort Mason on the Bay in San Francisco on April 30, 2010.

Bay Area and Silicon Valley Network: Special Action/Research Event

Social Media Network Analysis: Next Practices in Social Network Analysis, Tools and Media

Friday 30 April 2010
8:00am -5:00pm
http://www.regonline.com/BAN10
Workshop Abstract
Why do some social media and online groups succeed when others fail? How do different collections of online media and populations of authors and users differ from one another? How do patterns of contribution vary? How do these differences illustrate the roles people play within their communities?

Patterns of contribution and connection determines social media success. Visualizing these network patterns aids implementation, adoption, security and effectiveness of social media. A range of Internet social media including discussion groups, Twitter, enterprise social media, communities-of-practice, blogs and email are presented, analyzed and visualized. Network patterns are explored to illustrate the scope of variation among social media repositories and between types of contributors.

Maps and patterns of interaction deliver a far more comprehensive view of social media. These views generate actionable findings to improve social media effectiveness, syndication and collaborative outcomes. Network analysis and intelligence can guide community cultivation, coordination and development tasks. New network capabilities provision features that improve search, ranking and consumption of user generated content.

A freely available, open source tool will be demonstrated to perform basic social media network analysis for contemporary social media that should be relevant to business models and organizations of all types. Delegates will be equipped to use social network techniques to improve overall effectiveness and impact of social media, communities-of-practice and social software applications. Participants may expect to achieve immediate improvements in key business activities such as marketing, sales, engineering, support, service, innovation and overall organizational effectiveness.

Directions

Talk at Israel Internet Association on February 22, 2010

11MarMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

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 2The 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, business and law) as well as industry participants from sectors including mobile cellular companies and internet service suppliers.

My talk title: Analyzing Internet social media: visualizing social networks in (mobile) computer networks

Abstract: Social media systems on the Internet are sociologically interesting: why do some online groups succeed where others fail? How do different collections of online media and populations of authors differ from one another? How do patterns of contribution vary and how do these differences illustrate the roles people play within their communities? Several visualizations of patterns of contribution and connection in a range ofInternet social media including web boards, enterprise social networks services, and personal email are presented to illustrate the range of variation among social media repositories and between types of contributors. These images suggest that a more comprehensive overview of social media can generate sociologically relevant findings, improve community management tasks as well as provide features that can improve search and ranking of user generated content. A freely available tool, NodeXL, will be demonstrated to perform basic social media analysis tasks. Extending these tools to include mobile social software (“mososo”) data sets is a major new direction. In the not too distant future, mobile devices will possess a range of sensors and become more “socially aware”. When phones routinely notice each other the nature of social interaction will change dramatically. How will places and locations change when machines become socially aware? In this talk, sociologist Marc Smith, Chief Social Scientist for Connected Action Consulting Group, a provider of social media analysis platforms and services, will describe these new technologies and some ways of thinking about their implications.

Photos from the trip:

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Meeting: Saving Our Present for the Future: Personal Archiving 2010, February 16th at the Internet Archive

12FebMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

I will attend an interesting discussion organized by Jeff Ubois on February 16th at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.

Saving Our Present for the Future: Personal Archiving 2010

From family photographs and personal papers to health and financial information, vital personal records are becoming digital. At the same time, creation and capture of new digital information has become a part of the daily routine for hundreds of millions of people. But what are the long term prospects for this data?

The combination of new capture devices (more than 1 billion camera phones will be sold in 2010) with the move from older forms of media is reshaping both our personal and collective memories. The size and complexity of personal collections growing, these collections are spread across different media (including film and paper!), and the lines between personal and professional, published and unpublished are being redrawn.

Whether these issues are described as personal archiving, lifestreams, personal digital heritage, preserving digital lives, scrapbooking, or managing intellectual estates, they present major challenges for both individuals and institutions: data loss is a nearly universal experience, whether it is due to hardware failure, obsolescence, user error, lack of institutional support, or any one of many other reasons. Some of these losses may not matter; but the early work of the Nobel prize winners of the 2030s is likely to be digital today, and therefore at risk in ways that previous scientific and literary creations were not. And it isn’t just Nobel winners that matter: the lives of all of us will be preserved in ways not previously possible.

On Tuesday, February 16, the Internet Archive will host a small conference for practitioners in personal digital archiving.

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Oxford Internet Institute: Forum on Relationships and the Internet December 4th

28NovMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

On December 4th, I will be attending the Oxford Internet Institute‘s Forum on Relationships and the Internet which will feature researchers focused on computer-mediated relationships. Rather than being used primarily to access information, people often use networked computing to access people, creating or sustaining relationships with others. There are many ways in which the Internet and a range of applications are now used to find new people, find old people, maintain primary connections, sustain weak ties, and build personal and professional relationships. Dating sites are a clear part of the Internet relationship picture but so are professional “dating” services like LinkedIn or professional services directories like Craig’s List, social networking services like Facebook, and “normal” tools like email. People now use a concerted set of Internet tools in building and maintaining their relationships.

Researchers are interested in online dating and social networking. They are now exploring the role of information and communication technologies in all forms of interpersonal relationships. Practitioners from a growing and international relationship industry who want to cultivate and manage these relationship systems will attend along with policy-makers who seek to regulate their uses towards positive ends and avoid abuses.

Speakers include:

Bill Dutton, Oxford Internet Institute
Nai Li, Oxford Internet Institute
Bernie Hogan, Oxford Internet Institute
Ellen Helsper, London School of Economics
Monica Whitty, Nottingham-Trent University
Barry Wellman, University of Toronto and Director of NetLab
Joe Walther, Michigan State University
Nicole Ellison, Michigan State University

Research in Internet relationships goes beyond a focus on dating sites and services to incorporate all the stages and types of relationships being shaped by social information technology. My demonstration will illustrate the ways NodeXL can map relationships in a variety of social media spaces, including YouTube, flickr, email, twitter, and (with the help of Bernie Hogan’s ego-network importer) Facebook. These maps can be a useful ways of distinguishing different kinds of relationship patterns present in these spaces, identifying key participants who acts as hubs or bridges.

The OII also maintains a video webcast site with a great collection of recordings of lectures and panel discussions of a variety of topics related to the Internet and society. In particular, check out Duncan Watts presenting a talk on “Using the Web to do Social Science“.

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2009 Sociological Association Meetings – Internet Sociologists Meet (CITASA @ ASA09)

12SepMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

The 2009 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting was held in San Francisco, California, August 8-11.

The ASA attracts thousands of sociologists, a subsection of whom have a passion for the study of the Internet and its many forms of social impacts and uses. The Communications and Information Technology Section of the American Sociological Association (CITASA) is the group that gathers many forms of social science research on the creation and uses of information technology. This year’s meeting included two CITASA panels, round tables, a business meeting with awards, and a (windy!) boat ride through San Francisco Bay and beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

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The CITASA sponsored papers at the conference are listed below. The range of work illustrates the continued interest in social science studies of the impacts of information technology.

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