LSS'09 Keynote Making Sense Of The Networked Audience, Dr B Hogan

Making sense of the networked audience: The case of Facebook Bernie Hogan, PhD Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford Local Social Summit, Latitude 51.50015, Longitude -0.12624 November 3, 2009

A preamble: Why Local?

Scale matters.

Email and IM contact by distance. Source: Does Distance Still Matter in the Age of the Internet? Diana Mok, Juan-Antonio Carrasco and Barry Wellman

Rural connect to Rural Source: Network in the Garden Eric Gilbert, Karrie Karahalios and Christian Sandvig

Wellman’s Networked Individualism Door-to-door People Place-to-place Mail and landlines Person-to-person Email and proﬁles

The particular case of a peculiar age Person-to-person networking does not undermine distance. But it makes distance secondary to speciﬁc social relationships. Each individual has their own unique relationships. Like a thumbprint. We live in an age of access. To be local is to be accessible.

The paradox of convenience Everyone is somewhere, no one is everywhere

network literacy: a visual primer

CORE CONCEPTS types centrality communities network layouts

There are many types

Networks can show prominence Generally referred to in centrality. There are many types: Degree - links in & out Betweenness - shortest paths Power - high degree friends Closeness - easily reachable Source: Carter Butts

Networks cluster Liberal and Conservative Blogs Source: Divided they Blog Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance

Source: Jim Moody

Where does sociology ﬁt?

Because you can never have too many irrelevant friends

Reasons for friends on SNS 1. Actual friends 2. Acquaintances, family members, colleagues 3. It would be socially inappropriate to say no because you know them 4. Having lots of Friends makes you look popular 5. It’s a way of indicating that you are a fan (of that person, band, etc.) 6. Your list of Friends reveals who you are 7. Their Profile is cool so being Friends makes you look cool 8. Collecting Friends lets you see more people (Friendster) 9. It’s the only way to see a private Profile (MySpace) 10. Being Friends lets you see someone’s bulletins and their Friends-only blog posts (MySpace) 11. You want them to see your bulletins, private Profile, private blog (MySpace) 12. You can use your Friends list to find someone later 13. It’s easier to say yes than no. Source: danah boyd 19

Sometimes, this is what it feels like to be on the site. Source: HolyTaco.com

But again, scale matters. Men with 500 friends only have mutual conversations with 10 of them. Its up to 16 for women. That’s less than 4% of friends. Source: Economist (via Overstated.net)

So why bother? Person-to-person networks need access controls. Social network sites ﬁll this niche...poorly. Nevertheless, there’s gold in them thar’ hills.

Trace data can tell a lot Source: Predicting tie strength with social media. Eric Gilbert, Karrie Karahalios and Christian Sandvig.

And networks can help simplify Friends of friends are not randomly scattered, but clustered in coherent locales. Community detection can isolate these groups.

Friend lists Tedious and incoherent

Greedy Community Large swaths of Sense

Eigenvector Community Well partitioned, but overwhelming

Current tools to leverage networks on Facebook • Touchgraph • Nexus • Friendwheel • Mysocnet (Mine) • http://apps.facebook.com/mynet_phaseone/

So what? • Lurking within any social network site proﬁle is a host of clustered peers. Discovering these groups through community detection is an effective way to bring coherence to a proﬁle, and help it scale. • Consider: planning a party, recommending a concert, sending out important news.

Nearness is now a social property as much as a spatial one. This is not the same thing as collaborative ﬁltering. Networks do not signify similarity, they signify community. These are the people that do things together, disclose information to each other.

Looking forward Particular relationships create networks. Norms of access create overload. Thinking local is one solution, but it is partial. We need to create contexts, so users don’t have to.

Thank You Bernie Hogan Research Fellow, OII ;) @blurky bernie.hogan@oii.ox.ac.uk

LSS'09 Keynote Making Sense Of The Networked Audience, Dr B Hogan

by Local Social Summit on Nov 05, 2009

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LSS’09 Keynote Making Sense Of The Networked Audience, Dr B Hogan — Presentation Transcript

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