PowerPoint Presentation - Lecture

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social networks / social software fdm 20c
introduction to digital media lecture 16.05.2007
warren sack / film digital media department /
university of california, santa cruz
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last time

• surveillance

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outline for today

• social networks as science
• social networks as technology
• social networks as popular culture
• social networks as art

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social networks as science field

• social network analysis is an interdisciplinary
  social science, but has been of especial concern
  to sociologists
• recently, physicists and mathematicians have made
  large contributions to understanding networks in
  general (as graphs) and thus contributed to an
  understanding of social networks too.

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social network as science definition

• Social network analysis is grounded in the
  observation that social actors i.e., people are
  interdependent and that the links i.e.,
  relationships among them have important
  consequences for every individual and for all of
  the individuals together. ... Relationships
  provide individuals with opportunities and, at
  the same time, potential constraints on their
  behavior. ... Social network analysis involves
  theorizing, model building and empirical research
  focused on uncovering the patterning of links
  among actors. It is concerned also with
  uncovering the antecedents and consequences of
  recurrent patterns. (from Linton C. Freeman)

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social network as science history

• J.L. Moreno (1934) Friendship choices between 4th
  grade boys (triangles) and girls (circles)

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social networks as science history

• kinship studies Radcliffe-Brown, Levi-Strauss,
  etc.
• (see Jeff Tobin, faculty.oxy.edu/tobin/anth100/
  outlines/05.html)

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social networks as science history

• (see Jeff Tobin, faculty.oxy.edu/tobin/anth100/
  outlines/05.html)

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social networks as science history

• Stanley Milgram (1967) The Small World Problem,
  Psychology Today
• Milgram sent 60 letters to various recruits in
  Wichita, Kansas who were asked to forward the
  letter to the wife of a divinity student living
  at a specified location in Cambridge,
  Massachusetts. The particpants could only pass
  the letters (by hand) to personal acquaintances
  who they thought might be able to reach the
  target - whether directly or via a "friend of a
  friend".
• six-degrees of separation

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social networks as science history

• Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties
• Sometimes acquaintances are more valuable than
  friends (e.g., when one is looking for a job).

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social networks as science equivalence
A
A and B are structurally equivalent because
they connect to the same people and thus have
equivalent positions in the network.
B
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social networks as science centrality

• Diane is central Jane is not.
• See www.orgnet.com/sna.html

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social networks as science bridges
if youre a boy in this network (a triangle) and
you want to meet a girl (a circle), who are you
going to call for an introduction?
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social networks as science bridges
this guy, right?
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social networks as science social capital

• if you connect separate networks you have
  bridging capital
• if you are central to a network you have
  bonding capital

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social networks as science bowling alone

• sociologist robert putnam claims that united
  states citizens no longer know or trust their
  neighbors and thus communities have lost their
  social capital
• when did we start to lose it? after the second
  world war
• what media technology came into wide-spread use
  after the second world war?

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social networks as technology

• email, newsgroups, and weblogs, facebook,
  friendster, flickr and other forms of social
  software
• in the design of the arpanet (the forerunner to
  the internet) email was an afterthought!

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social networks as technology

• search engines e.g., Google (http//google.com)
• Googles Page Rank algorithm gives more weight to
  popular webpages.
• A webpage is considered popular if many other
  webpages link to it.
• compare this to search engines built specially
  for weblogs e.g., Cameron Marlows
  http//blogdex.net

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social networks as technology

• collaborative filtering and/or recommender
  systems e.g., amazon.coms feature People who
  bought this book also bought...

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social networks as popular culture

• e.g., six degrees of kevin bacon
• bacon number definition http//en.wikipedia.org/w
  iki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon
• kevin bacon has a bacon number of 0
• an actor, A, has a bacon number of 1 if s/he
  appeared in a movie with kevin bacon
• an actor, B, has a bacon number of 2 if s/he
  appear in a movie with A
• etc.
• try this with the internet movie database e.g.,
  http//imdb.com/name/nm0000102/board/nest/4534991
• or, have it done automatically here, at the
  oracle of bacon http//www.cs.virginia.edu/orac
  le/

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social networks as popular culture

• social software e.g., friendster, orkut, tribe,
  etc.
• recall the article by danah boyd what happens to
  social networks when they are explicitly
  declared?
• danah emphasizes how users have repurposed
  the technology to present their identity and
  connect in personally meaningful ways while the
  architect works to define and regulate acceptable
  models of use.
• to understand artificial social networks we
  need to rethink the social scientific concepts of
  equivalence, centrality, even node and
  link.

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social networks as art

• Ben Discoes, Friendster Map
• http//www.washedashore.com/people/friendster/frie
  ndster1.html

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social networks as art

• Mark Lombardi, Global Networks
• http//www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

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social networks as art

• Official Computer Scene Sexchart
• http//www.attrition.org/hosted/sexchart/

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social networks as art

• Josh On (Futurefarmers), They Rule
• http//www.theyrule.net/

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social networks as art

• Jonah Peretti, Nike Sweatshop Email
• http//depts.washington.edu/ccce/polcommcampaigns/
  peretti.html

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social networks as art

• Warren Sack and Sawad Brooks
• http//translationmap.walkerart.org
• Warren Sack, Conversation Map
• http//www.sims.berkeley.edu/sack/cm

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social networks as art

• Angie Waller, Data Mining the Amazon
• http//www.couchprojects.com/amazonweb/pages/title
  .htm

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social networks as art

• Thanks to Steve Dietz for these art links. See
  here for more examples http//www.yproductions.co
  m/WebWalkAbout/archives/000377.htmlmore

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visualizing (social) networks

• See Martin Dodges Cybergeography website for
  many examples of how networks can be visualized
  http//www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html

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next time

• media ownership