Advancing The Science of Networks in Communities
The INGroup Doctoral Consortium was held on July 22, 2015 in Pittsburgh, PA. Organized by Northwestern University and Georgia Tech, the all day consortium featured panels on topics such as obtaining grant funding, developing a program of research and computational social science. Student participants had the opportunity to present their research in small groups to top group researchers.
To see a more detailed account on the program, speakers, and organizers, head over to the website.
At the 2015 National Communication Association Annual Conference, Noshir Contractor, as well as several current, former, and future SONIC members, will receive the Top 4 Paper Award for their paper, “The Effect of Synchronization of Group Processes on Multiteam System Effectiveness.” The authors of this paper include Toshio Murase, Raquel Asencio, Joseph D. McDonald, Marshall Scott Poole, Leslie A. DeChurch, and Noshir S. Contractor. In addition to Leslie DeChurch currently being part of SONIC’s affiliated faculty, Toshio Murase was a former SONIC postdoctoral research associate, and Raquel Asencio, currently a grad student at Georgia Tech, will be joining SONIC in the Fall to work on the MTS Simulation. The award will be presented in November at the conference which is held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Click here for more information about the conference.
Sophia Sullivan, advisee to SONIC Director, Noshir Contractor, was chosen as a finalist to receive the 2015 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award. Although her paper was not selected as the winner of the award, she will have the possibility of submitting again next year.
Noshir Contractor, SONIC Director, was a guest lecturer from July 6th-10th at the Vienna Summer School on Digital Humanities. The courses he taught included Introduction to Social Network Analysis, Descriptive Network Analytics, Predictive Network Analytics, and Leveraging Computational Social Science to Address Grand Societal Challenges. Located at the Vienna University of Technology in Vienna, Austria, the “Summer School aims to discuss the possibilities of computer science-based research methods in the Digital Humanities while at the same time investigating the epistemological challenges of these methods as well as their theoretical bases and implications.”
SONIC Members will present at the INGRoup Conference in Pittsburgh, PA on July 23rd-25th, 2015. The dates, times, and locations, as well as an abstract for each presentation, can be found below.
Understanding the Assembly of Interdisciplinary Teams in an Emerging Scientific Field
Alina Lungeanu, Sophia Sullivan, Noshir Contractor
We examine the simultaneous effects of three sets of theoretical mechanisms – compositional, relational, and ecosystem– on team assembly in a nascent interdisciplinary scientific field. We empirically validate our hypotheses using hybrid agent-based and system dynamics computational models. Our findings contribute to our understanding of team assembly in emerging fields.
Funded by:
TBA
Looking for Leadership: Understanding Team Assembly in a Web Technology
Marlon Twyman, Amy Wax, Leslie A. DeChurch, Noshir S. Contractor
This presentation shares the empirical findings from two different studies that used a web-based team building platform, My Dream Team Builder, to facilitate the team assembly process. Survey and digital trace data are used for ERGM/p* analysis of leadership emergence and influence within groups.
Funded by:
U.S. Army Geospatial Center W5J9CQ-12-C-0017
National Science Foundation 0956059
Team size, boundary-spanning, and communication clarity: Readability, teams and information diversity in patent applications
Ryan Whalen, Hilla Brot, Noshir Contractor, Brian Uzzi
Using Patent Application data, we show that team size is positive correlated with the probability that an application will span technological boundaries. We also show that applications for boundary spanning inventions suffer from more difficult to understand writing, but that effect is mitigated by team size.
Funded by:
National Science Foundation CNS-1211375
Army Research Lab W911NF-09-2-0053
It’s Not Just What You Say – But Who You Say it to that Matters in MTSs: Conjoint Structural and Semantic Analyses of MTS Communications
Aaron Schecter, John Mathieu, Noshir Contractor
This paper combines structural methods with sentiment analysis to investigate how the pattern and content of communication impacts the performance of multiteam systems. Specifically, this study identifies within and between-team processes that are indicative of effective group communication. Additionally, each interaction is coded as “task-oriented” or “affective-oriented” using the text analysis software Diction. The interplay between the nature of the message and the direction of the message (within-team or between-team) is also shown to predict performance. This study combines the structural and semantic approaches and builds a model not based on “who said what” or “who talked to who,” but rather “who said what, to who.”
Funded by:
Army Research Lab W911NF-09-2-0053
How do emergency care teams create knowledge? An egocentric relational event model of communication events
Katherina Bohle Carbonell, Karen Könings, Segers Mien, Jeroen van Merrienboer
This study investigates how communication events in transactive memory systems support knowledge creation. Using egocentric relational event modeling, we report that the sequence of communication events begins with information retrieval and replies to those requests. Series of persistent co-constructions is also integral for teams to create knowledge.
Funded by:
NA
Multiteam System Networks and Global Health: The Case of Bihar, India
Leslie DeChurch, Noshir Contractor, Michelle Shumate, Ivan Hernandez
Bihar is among the poorest states in India, with a population one third the size of the United States. Bihar’s residents experience some of the worst health outcomes in all of India: extremely high infant and maternal mortality rates, female iron deficiency, low birth weight, malnutrition, and polio (Bihar, 2014). To address these issues broadly, Bihar has in place a collection of different organizations that form the State Health Society (SHS). The SHS includes, government workers, development partners, and healthcare employees. Each fulfills their own goals while sharing the common superordinate goal of improving health. Despite the need for teams to work together to address global health, collaboration is difficult when people are from different teams. These challenges can arise from the structure of the network that inhibits inter-team collaboration. Teams may see each other as obstacles or be too centralized in their leadership thereby reducing knowledge sharing and advice seeking between teams. Further, the individuals may lack a common view of the overarching goal for all teams, focusing instead on more proximate goals. Therefore, achieving global health requires taking a multiteamsystem (MTS) perspective by understanding the positive and negative factors that affect collective success. Using this perspective, we seek to develop actionable solutions for the SHS by measuring the networks among SHS members as well as their perceptions of their proximal and superordinate goals. With this information, we will assess the extent to which the MTS embodies the properties needed for collective success, and provide recommendations to help them achieve their overall of goal of improved public health.
Funded by:
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Development Grant 21640
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Family Health Division Grant 1084322
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.
Watch Balazs Vedres entire Speaker Series talk “Escaping Network Gravity” below or on SONIC’s YouTube channel.
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.
Read about Prasad Balkundi’s talk from May 7th, 2015 and watch the full presentation below on SONIC’s YouTube Channel.
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.