Advancing The Science of Networks in Communities
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
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
At the ARS 2015 in Anacapri, Italy on April 29th, Noshir Contractor was the keynote speaker for the Large Networks and Big Data Workshop. His speech was titled “Leveraging Network Science to Address Great Societal Challenges”. Topics included how network science is the solution to making sense of big data and monitoring and anticipating global problems to design effective solutions.
Learn more about ARS 2015 or Noshir’s speech
SONIC Lab is proud to welcome Prasad Balkundi, who will present a talk on Thursday, May 7th, 2015 at 2:00 PM in the SONIC Lab in the Frances Searle Building 1-459. All are welcome to attend. To schedule a one-on-one meeting with Professor Balkundi please schedule a time here. Please contact Nancy McLaughlin with any questions or comments.
Culture, Boundaries and Attitudes: A Meta-Analytic Test of Tie-Strength Theory
Although the strength-of-weak-tie theory is foundational in social network research, studies have reported inconsistent results sometimes supporting the weak tie theory and other times contradicting it. To address these inconsistencies, we explicate three boundaries of weak-tie theory: culture, labor markets, and outcomes. First, the theory was developed and tested extensively in Western nations, raising the issue of whether cultural context affects outcomes. Second, the theory was tested using lower-level applicants finding jobs across organizations, raising the issue as to the applicability of the theory for job movement within organizations for high-ranking employees. Third, beyond the question of finding a job, the question arises as to strength-of-tie effects on a broader set of outcomes such as access to information and job attitudes. Based on a meta-analysis of 101 studies (n = 23,303) we found that strong ties were more potent than weak ties in conformist cultures. Second, strong ties within the organization were more beneficial than weak ties. Also, managers benefitted more from strong ties. Third, strong ties facilitated immediate effectiveness and positive job attitudes whereas weak ties enhanced distal effectiveness for low-end employees.
About Prasad Balkundi
Prasad Balkundi is an associate professor of management at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He received his PhD in business administration from Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include social networks and leadership in teams and his work has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology and Leadership Quarterly.
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SONIC Lab is proud to welcome Balazs Vedres, who will present a talk on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2015 at 10:00 AM in the SONIC Lab in the Frances Searle Building 1-459. All are welcome to attend. To schedule a one-on-one meeting with Professor Vedres please schedule a time here. Please contact Nancy McLaughlin with any questions or comments.
Escaping Network Gravity: Innovative Team Structures in Video Game Development and Recorded Jazz
The main mechanisms governing social tie formation and operation are at odds with recognizing new ideas. Homophily, closure, skewed degree distributions, and limited vision are four main forces of network gravity. This talk brings cases where these gravity forces were overcome by organizational design and emergent institutions. Using data on more than 100,000 video game developers from the 1980’s to the present, and 400,000 jazz musicians from 1890 to the present I show mechanisms of achieving generative tension, productive diversity, and sustained exploration. I will highlight the role of structural folds, and the significance of overlapping yet cognitively diverse communities.
About Balazs Vedres
Vedres’ research furthers the agenda of understanding historical dynamics in network systems, combining insights from network science, historical sociology, and studies of complex systems in physics and biology. His contribution is to combine historical sensitivities to patterns of processes in time with a network analytic sensitivity to patterns of connectedness cross-sectionally. A key element of this work was the adoption of optimal matching sequence analysis to historical network data. His research results were published in the top journals of sociology, with two recent articles in the American Journal of Sociology exploring the notion of structural folds: creative tensions in intersecting yet cognitively diverse cohesive communities. Vedres’ recent research follows video game developers and jazz musicians as they weave collaborative networks through their projects and recording sessions. Vedres is the recipient of several awards and prizes. He is the founder and director of the Center for Network Science at Central European University.
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SONIC Lab is proud to welcome Libby Hemphill, who will present a talk on Thursday, April 16th, 2015 at 2:00 PM in the SONIC Lab in the Frances Searle Building 1-459. All are welcome to attend. To schedule a one-on-one meeting with Professor Hemphill please schedule a time here. Please contact Nancy McLaughlin with any questions or comments.
What Can Congress’s Twitter Use Teach Us About Framing and Polarization?
Social media offers politicians an opportunity to bypass traditional media and directly influence their audience’s opinions and behavior through issue framing. I examine how members of the U.S. Congress use Twitter to accomplish framing and explore the effects of their behavior on mainstream media coverage. Social media also offers researchers trace data for detecting topic communities and political polarization that would otherwise not be revealed until legislative votes take place. I will discuss how my colleagues and I used politicians’ social media behavior, especially the affiliation networks that result from their hashtag use, to create new measures of political polarization that make it possible for us to gauge polarization throughout the legislative process.
About Libby Hemphill
Libby (PhD, University of Michigan) directs the CaSM Lab. She is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Information Studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Libby is broadly interested in computer-mediated communication, social media, digital humanities, and organizational behavior.
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At the Northwestern Office for Sponsored Research (NU OSR) in Evanston, Illinois on February 27th, Noshir Contractor delivered a Brown Bag presentation titled “Using Computational Social Science to Address Grand Societal Challenges”. The office is Northwestern’s arm for assisting and developing funded programs in support of the university’s research mission.
At the 2015 Machine Learning and Data Analytics Symposium (MLDAS 2015) in Doha, Qatar, Noshir Contractor delivered a talk titled “Leveraging Computational Social Science to Address Grand Societal Challenges” on March 10th. The symposium was co-organized by Boeing and the Qatar Computing Research Institute.
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management is hosting the Computational Social Science Conference from May 15th to 17th. The purpose of the summit is to advance sociological knowledge through computational methods. The conference will host workshops, a datathon, and prominent speakers such as David Ferrucci (Bridgewater Associates), Katy Börner (Indiana University), Sandra González-Bailón (University of Pennsylvania), and Michael Macy (Cornell University). The conference is for social science researchers, open data activists, tech workers, and think tank analysts and is co-hosted by Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and SONIC.
Noshir Contractor spoke on how to enable professional networks in Naperville, Illinois on February 20th at the Chicago Collaboration for Women in STEM conference. He highlighted a “3D Approach” that focused on discovering, diagnosing, and designing one’s personal network.