SONIC lab collaborator Maryam Fazel-Zarandi, Ph. D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, and Hugh Devlin, Yun Huang, and Director Noshir Contractor of the SONIC lab, had a paper entitled “Expert Recommendation based on Social Drivers, Social Network Analysis, and Semantic Data Representation” accepted by the 2nd International Workshop on Information Heterogeneity and Fusion in Recommender Systems (HetRec 2011) held as part of the 5th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys 2011).
Video Lectures of Virtual World Observatory presentations
Brian Keegan presented Virtual World Observatory research at the ACM Web Science and AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) this summer. Video lectures of these presentations and the slide decks are now available:
Web Science: http://videolectures.net/
ICWSM: http://videolectures.net/
MTS studies featured on Army Research Lab Blog
The work of several SONIC researchers including Brooke Foucault Welles, and Tony Vashevko has been featured in the Army Research Lab’s Network Science-Collaborative Technology Alliance Blog. The information can be found after the jump, halfway down the blog under “Multi-Team Systems Simulation”.
Whether it’s emergency relief due to natural disasters or humanitarian aid in war torn regions, there are situations where international organizations, first responders, and military personnel need to collaborate effectively on teams in stressful situations. Researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will use the Multi-team System Simulation – or MTS Platform – to gain insight on how network parameters can be configured to better allow small teams to coordinate in such emergency situations.
ICWSM Presentation
Brian Keegan presented on behalf of the Virtual World Observatory’s gold farming team at the 2011 AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM). A copy of the paper titled “Trust Amongst Rogues? A Hypergraph Approach for Comparing Clandestine Trust Networks in MMOGs” can be found here and the accompanying slides can be found here. The abstract:
Gold farming and real money trade refer to a set of illicit practices in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) whereby players accumulate virtual resources to sell for ―real world‖ money. Prior work has examined trade relationships formed by gold farmers but not the trust relationships which exist between members of these organizations. We adopt a hypergraph approach to model the multi-modal relationships of gold farmers granting other players permission to use and modify objects they own. We argue these permissions reflect underlying trust relationships which can be analyzed using network analysis methods. We compare farmers’ trust networks to the trust networks of both unidentified farmers and typical players. Our results demonstrate that gold farmers’ networks are different from trust networks of normal players whereby farmers trust highly-central non-farmer players but not each other. These findings have implications for augmenting detection methods and re-evaluating theories of clandestine behavior.
Contractor Presents in three Panels at INGroup
SONIC Lab director Noshir Contractor presents in three panels at the 6th Annual INGroup Conference. Topics discussed include team research and team science, challenges in studying groups, and teamwork on virtual organizations. Visit the INGroup website for more details.
Video Presentation from WebSci11
A video of Brian Keegan’s presentation of the “Computational Social Science of Clandestine Organizations” at the Web Science 2011 conference is available online: http://videolectures.net/acmwebsci2011_keegan_intersection/
Contractor to teach Workshop in Trento, Italy
Director of SONIC Lab, Noshir Contractor, will be teaching a workshop on Social Networks concepts and analysis techniques in Trento Italy next week. The course will introduce and illustrate social networks as a suitable conceptual tool to depict and empirically analyze complex datasets characterizing the cloud-computing era. More information can be found at the University of Trento’s website.
Electronic Games & the First Amendment
Just recently published in the Northwestern Interdisciplinary Law Review, a paper authored by SONIC researcher Thomas Rousse provides a structural theoretical analysis on the history and direction of electronic game censorship. Expanding upon the question of whether electronic games are protected under the First Amendment, raised by Brown v. EMA, a Supreme Court case likely to be decided tomorrow, this paper argues that electronic games should be protected by the First Amendment, and their lack of protection over the past forty years .
The paper has been uploaded and can be read at SSRN: Electronic Games & the First Amendment
Abstract:
Prompted by the upcoming Supreme Court case Brown v. EMA (formerly Schwarzenegger v. EMA), this article explores the case history of electronic game censorship, the history of new media regulation, and how significant free speech theories can be applied to electronic games. In Brown v. EMA and similar cases, lawmakers have attempted to regulate electronic games based on their violent content, while earlier cases refused to consider electronic games as speech at all. This paper advocates a structuralist analysis of media, the expressive germ perspective, to determine which media should be considered speech. By focusing on the capabilities rather than the content of nascent media, courts can avoid misclassifying rightfully protected expression due to cultural prejudice or unfamiliarity with new media. Ultimately, this paper broadens the discussion raised by Brown v. EMA to interrogate our judiciary’s failure to protect media in their formative stages and fulfill the anti-majoritarian goals of the First Amendment.
Best Paper at Web Science 2011
A paper authored by members of the Virtual Worlds Observatory team including Brian Keegan, Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, Dmitri Williams, Jaideep Srivastava, and Noshir Contractor won a best paper at the 2011 ACM Web Science conference. The paper is titled “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi Virtuali? Promise and Peril at the Intersection of Computational Social Science and Online Clandestine Organizations.”
Abstract:
Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) maintain archival databases of all player actions and attributes including activity by accounts engaged in illicit behavior. If individuals in online worlds operate under similar social and psychological motivations and constraints as the offline world, online behavioral data could inform theories about offline behavior. We examine high risk trading relationships in a MMOG to illuminate the structures online clandestine organizations employ to balance security with efficiency and compare this to an offline drug trafficking network. This data offers the possibility of performing social research on a scale that would be unethical or impracticable to do in the offline world.However, analyzing and generalizing from clandestine behavior in online settings raises complex epistemological and methodological questions about the validity of such mappings and what methods and metrics are appropriate in these contexts. We conclude by discussing how computational social science can be applied to online and offline criminological concerns and highlight the “dual use” implications of these technologies.
Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) maintain archival databases of all player actions and attributes including activity by accounts engaged in illicit [DW1]behavior. If individuals in online worlds operate under similar social and psychological motivations and constraints as the offline world, online behavioral data could inform theories about offline behavior. We examine high risk trading relationships in a MMOG to illuminate the structures online clandestine organizations employ to balance security with efficiency and compare this to an offline drug trafficking network. This data offers the possibility of performing social research on a scale that would be unethical or impracticable to do in the offline world.However, analyzing and generalizing from clandestine behavior in online settings raises complex epistemological and methodological questions about the validity of such mappings and what methods and metrics are appropriate in these contexts. We conclude by discussing how computational social science can be applied to online and offline criminological concerns and highlight the “dual use” implications of these technologies.
[DW1]Rule breaking? Law breaking?
Yun Huang presented in ICSN at Austin TX
June 3rd, Dr. Yun Huang presented the paper “Distance Matters: Exploring Proximity and Homophily in a Virtual World” co-authored with Cuihua Shen and Noshir Contractor in the First International Conference of Theory and Applications of Social Networks at Austin, Texas. This study analyzes the impacts of distance, time zones, players’ gender, age, and game age on relation building in virtual worlds. The results show that spatial proximity, temporal proximity, and homophily in age and game age have strong impacts on players’ behavior in creating online relations in EverQuest II.