TED Talk discusses Wikipedia and the culture of collaboration
In the TED Talk “Why We Collaborate” Guy Raz talks to a series of people who have given TED Talks on the mysteries behind mass collaboration. Guest, Jimmy Wales, one of the creators of Wikipedia talks about how Wikipedia has become one of the most popular sites getting about 19 billions page views a month but could not have been what it is today without the help and collaboration of 80,000 volunteers all around the world. Wikipedia has created an atmosphere that allows people who are not in the same city let alone the same state maybe even country to work towards a common goal, spreading knowledge of music, history, math by way of Wikipedia. In addition to Wikipedia, Guy Raz brings Erik Michaels-Ober to talk about the app “Adopt a Hydrant” which is an app that worked with google maps and you could see where every hydrant was in Boston and then you could volunteer to adopt it and dig it out when the snow falls. You would think that no one would do such a thing but in fact thousands of people signed up to adopt a hydrant and together dug out thousands of hydrants in Boston thus bettering the city of Boston during snowfall.
You can listen to the whole TED Talk at http://www.npr.org/2013/07/13/197986218/why-we-collaborate
The New Laws of Explosive Networks
Although network connectivity has always been thought of in a slow and constant manner, researchers have discovered that in special cases, connectivity begins with a bang (and ends with one too) in a phenomenon called “explosive percolation.” It stems from networks being so interconnected that a chain reaction develops, and has serious consequences. A possible solution to this is instead of (as in a traditional network) having random nodes connect to each other, allowing nodes to choose between two other random nodes, so it could choose whichever node has less previous connections. That way, if the connection fails, less nodes/connections will be affected.
To learn more (including how this was not discovered before), visit the article at: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150714-explosive-percolation-networks/
Innovation From Army Scientist May Change How We Conduct Network Science Research
This article posted by Yolanda R. Arrington, blogger for the United States Defense Department, describes the newest innovation in the field of network science. An army computer scientist has created a means of experimenting he calls the Dynamically Allocated Virtual Clustering Management System, or DAVC, for short. “The DAVC allows researchers to dynamically create, deploy, and manage virtual clusters of heterogeneous nodes within a cloud-computing environment.” Essentially, it enables researchers to configure intricate networking scenarios and test them in a controlled, repeatable method while also allowing for multiple experiments to be conducted simultaneously.
The video of SONIC Speaker Series talk by Libby Hemphill is now up on YouTube
Watch Libby Hemphill’s entire Speaker Series talk “What can Congress’s Twitter use teach us about framing and polarization?” below or on SONIC’s YouTube channel.
The Video of SONIC Speaker Series Talk by Balazs Vedres now up on YouTube!
Watch Balazs Vedres entire Speaker Series talk “Escaping Network Gravity” below or on SONIC’s YouTube channel.
Brooke Foucault-Welles and Noshir Contractor Receive Article of the Year Award for “Dynamic Models of Communication in an Online Friendship Network”
Each summer, the editorial board of Communication Methods and Measures, the official journal for the Communication Theory and Methodology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), nominates what they consider to be the three best articles published in the prior year. The executive board of CTM then chooses the winner of the Article of the Year Award from those three.
We are proud to announce that former SONIC graduate student, Brooke Foucault-Welles received the Article of the Year Award for her paper “Dynamic Models of Communication in an Online Friendship Network,” coauthored by Tony Vashevko, Nick Bennett and Noshir Contractor. Bennett was previously a SONIC research technologist and Vashevko was a SONIC research associate. This prestigious award will be presented at the AEJMC Annual Conference in San Francisco, California.
Click here for more information about the conference.
Click here to read the winning article.
The video of Prasad Balkundi’s SONIC Speaker Series talk is now available on our YouTube Page!
Read about Prasad Balkundi’s talk from May 7th, 2015 and watch the full presentation below on SONIC’s YouTube Channel.
Strong vesus weak: A meta-analysis of tie strength and individual effectiveness
Eric Forbush Uses NetLogo to Plan for the First Mission to Mars
Eric Forbush was featured in the McCormick School of Engineering’s news for his work using NetLogo to model how astronauts on the mission to Mars would switch tasks mid-mission.
Read more about Eric’s work here.
Noshir Contractor Delivers Speech at Internet Science Conference
At the 2nd International Conference on Internet Science in Brussels, Belgium on May 28th, Noshir Contractor delivered a speech titled “Leveraging WINS (Web/Internet/Network Science) to Address Societal Challenges”. Noshir was a keynote speaker along with Marietje Schaake, Christian de Larrinaga, Andrea M. Matwyshyn, Marcelo Thompson, and Motohiro Tsuchiya.
Learn more about the 2nd International Conference on Internet Science
Noshir Contractor Honored as International Communication Association (ICA) Fellow
The International Communication Association inducted Professor Noshir Contractor as a Fellow at the annual ICA conference held in San Juan, Puerto Rico on May 21-25, 2015. The inducting committee had the following to say about Prof Contractor:
“Noshir Contractor is recognized for his stellar work on communication networks and organizational communication, and for his path-breaking research in computational social science, communication information systems, and multi-level network modeling. His co-authored book Theories of Communication Networks is by far the most comprehensive and significant theoretical treatise on communication networks. He is one of the few scholars in our discipline to have published in the prestigious journal Science and in the coveted Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the foremost scholar in multi-method, multi-level network modeling and has become a national and international leader in applying network analysis to broad-scale social problems. This intellectual leadership extends to policy arenas through his work on emergency response systems, science teams, sustainable development, cyberinfrastructure, and knowledge networks. He has produced a corpus of scholarship that has carved new terrains, captured the attention of researchers inside and outside the field, and garnered an outstanding record of external funding.”
Learn more about ICA Fellows