sonic speaker series – The Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC)

Ackland to lead Hyperlink Network Analysis Workshop

2011-09-23 No Comments

On Friday, October 7th, from 10:00-12:00p.m. Robert Ackland will be leading a workshop on Hyperlink Network Analysis in Frances Searle Room 1-459 on Northwestern University’s Evanston Campus.

If you plan to attend, please email Marilyn Logan: mjlogan@northwestern.edu, by Thursday, September 29.

This presentation will involve a demonstration of hyperlink network analysis using two software packages: the VOSON System (a web-based application for hyperlink
network construction and analysis) and VOSON+NodeXL (a VOSON plugin to the NodeXL Excel 2007/2010 template for social media network analysis). Topics covered
include: creating a hyperlink network (identifying seed URLs, setting the webcrawler parameters); node preparation (methods for filtering and controlling the grouping of web pages); coding of node attributes; basic social network analysis metrics; network visualization; clustering; website content analysis. Participants wanting to use the software are requested to bring their laptops with Mozilla Firefox and VOSON+NodeXL installed, and must have (free) VOSON user account.
See http://voson.anu.edu.au and http://www.uberlink.com for information on the VOSON project and software. See http://nodexl.codeplex.com for information on NodeXL.

Robert Ackland is a Fellow at the Australian National University, where he conducts empirical social science research into online social and organizational networks. He leads the VOSON project http://voson.anu.edu.au, coordinates the ANU’s Master of Social Research programme and teaches on the social science of the Internet and online research methods. Robert has degrees in economics from the University of Melbourne, Yale University (where he was a Fulbright Scholar) and the ANU, where he gained his PhD in 2001.

For full details, view the flyer pdf.

News, SONIC Speaker Series

Robert Ackland SONIC Speaker Series

2011-09-22 No Comments

On Friday, October 7, from 2:00-3:00 p.m. Australian National University Fellow, Robert Ackland will be giving a presentation in Room 1-483 of Frances Searle Building on the Northwestern University Evanston Campus.
This presentation provides an overview of empirical research into WWW hyperlink networks.

Social scientific research in this area is classified into three broad approaches, where hyperlink networks are studied as citation networks, issue networks and social networks, respectively. The disciplinary foundations, underlying assumptions and examples of research for each approach are discussed. The presentation then turns to available tools for conducting hyperlink network research, focusing on three particular tools that are associated with the above approaches: SocSciBot, Issuecrawler, and the Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks (VOSON) which was created by the presenter. The three tools are compared in the context of a particular research exercise: constructing the hyperlink network of environmental activist organizations. This presentation concludes with a brief outline of the VOSON project.

Robert Ackland is a Fellow at the Australian National University, where he conducts empirical social science research into online social and organizational networks. He leads the VOSON project (http://voson.anu.edu.au), coordinates the ANU’s Master of Social Research programme and teaches on the social science of the Internet and online research methods. Robert has degrees in economics from the University of Melbourne, Yale University (where he was a Fulbright Scholar) and the ANU, where he gained his PhD in 2001.

Download the flyer here.

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Comparing Webcrawlers for the Social Sciences

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Events, News

Yuval Kalish Workshop

2011-09-12 No Comments

Yuval Kalish, an assistant professor in the Department of Management of Tel Aviv University will be leading a workshop on Wednesday, September 14 from 2:00-5:30 pm in Frances Searle, Room 1.459.
This workshop provides a hands-on tutorial on how to fit Exponential Random Graph (ERG) Models for social selection using Pnet.

If you plan on attending, please RSVP to Marilyn Logan by 5pm September 13.

ERG models have been referred to as the most promising technique for the modeling of social networks (Snijders, 2007), and has wide applications in the area of organizational studies and communication studies. Topics include: the logic of ERG models, Parameter selection and estimation, parameter interpretation, Goodness of Fit, and troubleshooting convergence issues.
We will discuss Multivariate ERG models if time permits and there is participant interest. Participants are requested to bring their laptops after they have downloaded pnet from: www.sna.unimelb.edu.au/pnet/pnet.html and made sure that it works on their computer.

Events, News, SONIC News, SONIC Speaker Series

Maria Binz-Scharf SONIC Speaker Series

2011-09-09 No Comments

Professor Maria Binz-Scharf will be presenting “Collaborative Production of Scientific Knowledge” on Thursday, September 15, 2011 10:30-11:30 a.m.

Research scientists have become increasingly dependent on collaborations across laboratories and organizations to maintain their productivity. However, growing specialization of individual laboratories works against a current drive towards understanding systems in the sciences. Consequently, there is a tension between the rising importance of collaborative efforts and the practical and structural challenges in establishing and managing such collaborations in the quest to understand our world. Drawing on ethnographic case studies of three academic research labs, we illustrate how scientific knowledge is produced in collaborations that are established and maintained through virtual organizations (VOs). As much as VOs can facilitate scientific work across time and space, they do not eradicate the social aspects (e.g. trust among scientists, institutional limitations, laboratory cultures) to scientific knowledge production.

Maria Binz-Scharf is Associate Professor of Management at the City College of CUNY, and Visiting Researcher at Xerox PARC. Her research examines how individuals search for and share knowledge to accomplish work. In particular, she is interested in understanding the role technology plays in processes of knowledge sharing and innovation. With the support of grants from the NSF and NIH, she has studied the knowledge networks of biologists, primary care physicians, and DNA forensic scientists.

Download the flyer here.

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Collaborative Production of Scientific Knowledge

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Events, SONIC Speaker Series

Yuval Kalish SONIC Speaker Series

2011-08-17 No Comments

Visiting scholar Yuval Kalish will be presenting “Till Stress Do Us Part: Linking Communication networks, Stress and Voluntary Exit in Extreme Contexts” on Monday, August 29, 2011 10:30-11:30 a.m.

Research has linked stress with various withdrawal behaviors, including voluntary exit from groups. research also demonstrated that stress is contagious – it spreads among group members. However, there is no detailed theory or study of the mechanisms by which stress is disseminated by individuals to others in a group. We discuss and empirically test four stress-related processes that explain why some individuals voluntarily leave their group.

Two hundred and seventy-eight individuals (17 groups) in a unique military setting were measured for their communication-network structure and individual stress at three time-points. Using HLM and stochastic actor-oriented models for social networks, we found support for stress-related withdrawal and selection, and for stress-contagion. Managerial implications are discussed.

Yuval Kalish is assistant professor at the Department of Management, Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on the relationship between individual attributes, networks structures and outcomes within and between organizations. He focuses on the modeling of social networks using Exponential Random Graph models (for which he jointly received the most cited paper award in Social Networks) and other analytic techniques. He teaches courses on leadership, conflict management, statistics and network analysis.

Download the flyer here.

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Till Stress Do Us Part

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Events, News, SONIC Speaker Series

Stuart Shulman SONIC Speaker Series

2011-01-28 No Comments

Stuart Shulman presents “Measuring Validity in Annotation” Friday, February 4, 2011.Tools for reviewing, coding, and retrieving text found in qualitative data analysis packages carry with them no particular attributes for ensuring the reliability or validity of the recorded observations. Based on more than 10 years of multidisciplinary experience doing qualitative research, this presentation guides researchers through aspects of coder validity and reliability.

Dr. Stuart W. Shulman is founder & CEO of Texifter, LLC and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding Director of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at the University of Pittsburgh and at UMass Amherst, as well as Associate Director of the National Center for Digital Government.

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Measuring Validity in Annotation

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Events, News, SONIC News, SONIC Speaker Series

Leslie DeChurch SONIC Speaker Series

2010-11-19 No Comments

Leslie DeChurch, University of Central Florida “Collaboration within and across teams: Leadership forms and network structures” Friday, November 19, 2010.

Organizations are restructuring into collaborative work systems because they offer the ability to address complex problems by combining expertise distributed across business functions, knowledge specialties, geographic locations, and organizational boundaries. Often times the goals these systems face are complex and multifaceted requiring multiple distinct teams to coordinate their efforts and compile information for decision making distributed across a network of teams. The current study explores the structural contingency theory prediction that collaboration is a function of alignment between the form of leadership and structure of communication network. Ideas were tested in a sample in 80, 6-person networks tasked with performing a laboratory pc-game-based humanitarian aid task. Leadership form and communication network structures were manipulated, and effects on socio-cognitive networks, teamwork processes, and multiteam effectiveness examined.

Professor DeChurch’s research program explores what makes effective team leaders, how teams successfully collaborate across boundaries, and how leadership and team dynamics are sustained in virtual organizations. Professor DeChurch is currently Principal Investigator on “Building functionally collaborative infrastructure in virtual organizations” (NSF), and “Leadership in complex network environments” (Army Research Institute).

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Collaboration Within and Across Teams

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Events, News, SONIC News, SONIC Speaker Series

Scott Feld SONIC Speaker Series

2010-11-12 No Comments

Scott Feld, Purdue University “Social Network Theorizing Using Ideal Types” Friday, November 12, 2010 (audio and slides).
Scott L. Feld suggests that one approach to network theorizing is to identify a useful “ideal type,” carefully specify its defining properties, derive important implications of those properties, and consider how deviations from the defining properties affect the relevant implications. Professor Feld will illustrate this approach by considering the ideal type of a robust network hierarchy, distinguish it from other similar patterns (e.g. a transitive hierarchy or simple core-periphery), provide an empirical illustration, and consider some causes and consequence of this type of network pattern.

Scott L. Feld is Professor of Sociology (and Political Science) at Purdue University, and a Visiting Scholar at NICO. This presentation is part of his current effort to explicate the theoretical strategy in his earlier works on the focused organization of social ties, on friends of friends, and on the robust network hierarchies found in academia.

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Social Network Theorizing Using Ideal Types

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Events, News, SONIC News, SONIC Speaker Series

Benjamin Elbirt SONIC Speaker Series

2010-11-05 No Comments

Benjamin Elbirt, Chief Information Officer of INSNA, “Elbirt Technologies Software Suite – The Next Generation in Network Data Visualization, Sonification and Analysis” Friday, November 5, 2010 presentation (audio, slides, software demo).

The presentation will provide an introduction to ET-V 1.0, the latest software released by Benjamin Elbirt / Elbirt Technologies. ET-V 1.0 is a visualization, animation and sonification application for understanding network data in multidimensional space. It is a successor to the Jacob’s Ladder (Elbirt, 2005 & 2009a & 2009b) software line. The software has been rebuilt to use XLS and XLSX files (Microsoft Excel) and includes many new features that improve the overall display and performance. This application is only limited by available resources (memory/CPU/GPU) for the data volume.

M2C 4.0 is provided for conversion of data to coordinate systems. M2C 4.0 is the latest Matrix to Coordinates conversion program that uses the latest MDSJ (Brandes & Pich, 2007) and a customized Procrustes rotation algorithm for longitudinal analysis. Inputs include pairs or matrix, text delimited or XLS/XLSX files. Outputs are in XLSX files and include various calculations and formats including ET-V. The presentation will begin with a brief description and discussion of the M2C application and how the data is converted from relational pairs, matrixes and other formats into a coordinate system of equivalences. This will be followed by a brief tour of ET-V, the data visualization program. Finally, three data sets will be loaded and displayed using various ET-V functionality. These data sets are 1) Migration Patterns among Canadian Provinces (Barnett & Sung, 2003) (73 time points, animated and intonated); 2) US Senate Bill Co-sponsorship (Fowler, 2006) (Fowler, Co-sponsorship Network Data Page, 2010) (17 time points, animated); and 3) Sunbelt Conference Co-authorship networks (Elbirt, 2010) (10 time points, animated).

Bio: Benjamin Elbirt is a software engineer who has developed internet and desktop applications for more than 12 years. He received his master’s degree from SUNY Buffalo under Dr. George Barnett, Dr. Joseph Woelfel and Dr. Frank Tutzauer in 2008. Benjamin is currently employed as the Chief Information Officer of INSNA – the International Network for Social Network Analysis. Areas of interest include Matrix Mathematics, Semantic Text Analysis, Data Visualization and Intonation, Longitudinal/Time Series data, Data Collection, Cognitive Modeling, Agent Based Modeling and Social Network Analysis. More information on software and publications can be found at his website http://www.elbirttechnologies.com.

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Elbirt Technologies Software Suite

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Events, News, SONIC News, SONIC Speaker Series

Marc A. Smith SONIC Speaker Series

2010-10-22 No Comments

Marc A. Smith, Connect Action Consulting Group “Collections of Connections in Social Media: Maps and measures with NodeXL” Friday, October 22, 2010.

Networks are a data structure common across all social media that allow populations to author collections of connections. The Social Media Research Foundation’s NodeXL project makes analysis of social media networks accessible to most users of the Excel spreadsheet application. Networks become as easy to create as pie charts. Applying the tool to a range of social media networks has already revealed the variations present in online social spaces. A review of the tool and images of Twitter, flickr, YouTube, and email networks will be presented.

Marc Smith is a sociologist specializing in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction. He founded and managed the Community Technologies Group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington and led the development of social media reporting and analysis tools for Telligent Systems. Smith leads the Connected Action consulting group and lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. Smith cofounded the Social Media Research Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to open tools, data, and scholarship related to social media research.

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Collections of Connections in Social Media

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