Prof. Tunnard's Social Network Analysis and Social Media Classes

10 Ways To Transform Into A Social Enterprise

2012-01-20T16:37:00.000-05:00

Expert advice from IBM's Connect 2012 conference :

10 Ways To Transform Into A Social Enterprise

Social Network for Game Production

2011-12-07T14:35:00.003-05:00

I don't know if this is the direction you were looking for on this blog, but I just had another thought come to mind...

About a month ago I stumbled upon the website linked in the title. I found myself thoroughly impressed with what this group is striving to achieve: the production of a free and open game with an organization held together by this forum.

I personally would like to see more networks like this. Development of a product with frequent input from those who will be using it in the end (at least when this is possible for things such as games).

KLM to introduce ‘social seating’

2011-12-07T09:48:00.002-05:00

Hi, KLM just announced to introduce "social seating" I really like the idea, what do you think?

...Hoping to sit next to a cute blonde (or brunette) on your long flight home? Or perhaps you'd rather share an armrest with a CEO so you can pitch your latest and greatest ideas. That might just become possible using Air France / KLM's "social seating" service...

Social Networking Service

2011-12-07T06:12:00.000-05:00

Hi All,

I would like to share this article with you here. It gives a general introduction of Social networking in many aspects: history, social impact, typical structure, emerging trends in social networking, etc.

Best regards

WEI LIU

TweetDeck - Efficiently manage your private and business networks

2011-12-06T17:30:00.011-05:00

Dear all,

for those of you who have difficulties (due to a lack of time) to manage your several private or business networks you may have a look at the following application which allows you to use all of which through one application. Unfortunately Xing is not yet available but let's face it, sooner or later it will be merged into LinkedIn :)

Currently the following networks are available:
a) Myspace
b) Facebook
c) Buzz
d) Twitter
e) LinkedIn
f) Foursquare

So long,
Carlo

The Application of Social Network Analysis to Team Sports

2011-12-05T18:19:00.008-05:00

Hi everyone,

As I’m particularly interested in the similarities between managing a sports team and managing any other business, I searched for sources which link social networking to team sports.

To date, only few studies concentrated on sporting teams using social network methodology. Having said this, Lusher, Robins and Kremer (2010) studied the application of social networking analysis (SNA) to team sports. The authors argue that the current SNA allows exploring individual and group behavior in sporting teams by examining social relations between team members and their individual-level qualities simultaneously. The intra-group relations among teams, which include aspects like cohesiveness and hierarchies among players, provide information about the team members’ informal connections to each other. However, researchers analyzing these intra-group relations often face a number of challenges. For example:

1. Agreed behavioral norms as a key correlate of team cohesion
2. Small sample sizes (Unlike work-based and other types of groups, sport teams usually comprise only a relatively small number of individuals)
3. Membership may change relatively frequently

The SNA focuses on actual behavior between team members rather than simply on the attributes of the team members. As an example, being a captain can be considered as an attribute that the captain holds. From a relational perspective, though, the captain has a formal relation of power with others in the same team. In this context, it is important to understand that beyond formal relations, there are informal relations which influence a team’s operations.

SNA permits to examine whether the most popular individuals in a team are also those who have the strongest investment in the goals. Furthermore, SNA helps to determine whether the prominent players may indeed drive social norms through their informal social influence within the team. To put it in a nutshell, SNA enables the researcher (as well as the coach) to shift the focus from measurements on individuals to the team as a systemic unit of analysis, while still taking into consideration the qualities of individuals in the team.

Anja
HHL, M12

Source:

Lusher, D., Robins, G., & Kremer, P. (2010). The Application of Social Network Analysis to Team Sports. Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science, 14, 211-224. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1091367X.2010.495559.

Influence of Social Networks on Democracy

2011-12-05T15:53:00.004-05:00

I was browsing for an article when I came across the one linked in the title. To be honest, I am not really all that familiar with the source (legitimacy) of the article, but the reasoning is something that I can follow.

Though brief, it does hint at a topic that I discussed with Martin and Inga a few weeks ago: the possibility for people to seek and "educate" themselves with only that information which reinforces their existing viewpoint. This, in my opinion, can have strong implications for politics, in particular, on how people align themselves in an environment which can arguably be described as increasingly hostile. The article focuses on comments made by David Weinberger (researcher at Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society), who notes that social networks today are likely to supply you with input and information from those who think most like you. The take away message from the article being that social networks may be increasingly isolating us from differing opinions, allowing us to potentially reinforce our positions through back-pats and high-fives without having to vet it through conditions present in the past.

While reading through the article, I couldn't help but think of a website that I stumbled upon several months ago (http://www.americanselect.org, a website with the stated desire of providing a third party ticket). Could this be a social network that allows us to engage in productive discussions, or will it end up being an alcove for link-minded individuals? Either way, for me it is an interesting example of how social networks are being used in the political arena.

The Influence of Social Networks on Corporate Finance decisions

2011-12-05T14:28:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

First of all, I hope the link works. It should directly open up a pdf-file. If it does not, let me know and I'll send the document.

During the debate today, we came to a point where we tried to figure out, if the impact of social networking on the economic success of a company can be measured somehow.

Although I still think, it is pretty hard to tell in the end, I somehow find the idea of actually connecting the economic, i.e. monetary success of a company with its abilities of social networking very appealing.

Cesare Fracassi, from the Anderson School at UCLA, did some empirical research on this topic.

Furthermore he seemed to have used some interesting SNA tool, on which I will definetly have a closer look.

Here again the link:

Corporate Finance Policies and Social Networks

Enjoy!

Companies Are Erecting In-House Social Networks

2011-12-05T13:40:00.002-05:00

Hi all,

While preparing for our debate “Social Networks will become the most important drivers for organizational success” I came along an interesting article posted by the New York Times in June 2011.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/technology/27social.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

To summarize, the article deals with the trend of implementing technical based social networks in companies while illustrating some up and down sides of it. Generally speaking, it started with the usage of social networks in “private life” (facebook, twitter and others) and became more and more important for businesses itself. Over the last years firms who provide social networks for other companies have experienced an enormous growth and follow the trend of implementing social networks. Although someone may think people are already familiar with using social networks it can still be tricky to adapt it to the corporate level because of several reasons:

1. Mis-usage of the network (private versus work related topics

2. People interact in different ways, some may be active and post information regularly whereas others are not interested in exchanging information (complication of overall information flow)

3. Corporate secretà how to store valuable company information

Although there are clearly negative aspects of using social networks within a company, it can help to make operations more efficient.

1. Easy to exchange information with people from offices in other countries

2. Be able to make information visible to everyone which would be very difficult via e-mail

3. Less meetings necessary

Personally, I really like the article as it presents a clear overview of pros and cons of social networks in a company. Reading through the article it becomes clear how important and efficient social networks can be for a company while at the same time pointing out what aspects have to be taken into consideration when doing so. Everything always has a downside somewhere but understanding these aspects in the first place helps to find ways for improvement. Doing so, it is possible that social networks in a company can become even more successful in the future.

A CEO perspective on the business value of internal social networks

2011-12-05T12:12:00.002-05:00

Hi all,

I found this interesting article regarding how Deloitte Australia is using social collaboration site yammer in their organization.

There is a video interview of Deloitte Australia CEO explaining various ways yammer has been beneficial to the organization and he actively participates in the conversation on yammer.

Regards,

Jawad

http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2011/09/compulsory-viewing-a-ceo-perspective-on-the-business-value-of-internal-social-networks.html

Facebook will not be the only player

2011-12-05T11:18:00.000-05:00

Hi guys,

take a look at this article I found on Techcrunch, a leading
US tech & trend website.

Its about the future of social networking, especially social media.

What I think is really interesting is the state of the author who says
that by simply looking at the history we can see giants like AOL, like
Microsoft or Apple or even Google. And we can see here is that they all
at some point got more or less substituted by another big company.

Best regards,
Jan Schulz M12

Are social networks good or bad?

2011-12-05T10:58:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

I would like to share with you this site, which I thought was very useful to understand the pros and cons about social media. Also there are some statistics and numbers which I think is very interesting to look at.

Best,

Andres Perez, HHL M12

Start-Ups With Larger Social Networks Receive More Venture Capital

2011-12-04T17:54:00.000-05:00

Hi Everyone,

This is a very good read regarding a new study just released by Ryerson University in Canada. It was made possible due to the advancements in social network analysis, and should shed some light on the continuing evolution of SNA.

Also, since most people in the class seem to have an interest in entrepreneurship and start-ups, I thought this article would be even more relevant.

Hopefully we will see more studies done like this around the globe as I think the results are very insightful.

Enjoy!

Andy,
HHL, MBA 2012

How Effective Social Media is for Small Businesses

2011-12-04T13:00:00.003-05:00

Hey Guys,

I came across this article about how relationship between small business and social networking websites is growing.

They have a nice infograph on the link to show the current statistics.

What is surprising is that twitter is the most popular social networking site among small businesses. (78%).

Regards

Jawad

http://soshable.com/how-effective-social-media-is-for-small-businesses-infograph/

Social business strategy – an example @ DELL

2011-12-04T08:35:00.003-05:00

Hello,

I have come across an interesting article on a recent evolution in corporate strategy, the so-called social business strategy. The article presents the strategic approach of Dell on how to employ social media to a) communicate with customers, b) promote the flow of information in internal networks, and c) foster social innovation in the organization.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2011/12/01/dell-social-business-strategy-the-secret-sauce/

According to the article, Dell is dedicated to constantly improve its social media appearance and devotes a large amount of resources to achieve this. For example, Dell employs several thousand “social media professionals” that take care of the various social media channels and communities of Dell.

This interesting link is also in the article: http://socialbusinessindex.com/

The index ranks companies according to their social media activity.

I strongly believe in order to be successful, organizations must define a strategy on how to leverage internal and external networks and how to effectively use social media technology. To achieve the required coverage in the organization, a social business strategy should be part of the corporate strategy definition.

Note: The article also talks about Dell’s efforts towards social responsibility (i.e. doing something for the greater good), which displays the problems in defining the magnitude of a social business strategy. Where does a company set the boundaries of its social business strategy? Is it limited to the use of social media to foster internal and external social networks? Or should it also include the corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches of a company?

The risks of Social Networking sites

2011-12-03T18:40:00.003-05:00

Hi all,

I just came across an article about the dangers of social networking sites togetheer with some tips of what to do and what to avoid. For many people most of this might be obvious, but, as one expert put it, "there’s a whole lot of clicking without a lot of thinking ".

One thing that I did not fully realize before was what do these 3rd party applications you can use on FB for example really do. The truth is that the SN sites gather and store a lot of information which can be used (or misused) in different ways, ranging from invasive targeted ads to identity theft.

You may think that Facebook profiles and sometimes MySpace pages, if they’re set as private, are available only to friends or specific groups. However, that’s not true if you use applications. On Facebook, applications can only be downloaded if a user checks a box allowing its developers to “know who I am and access my information,” which means everything on a profile, except contact info. Given little thought, agreeing to the terms has become a matter of routine for the nearly 70 million Facebook users worldwide. Now, remember when you used the social graph application, how many of you have clicked yes without really thinking about it ?

So what do these third-parties do with the information? Sometimes, they use it to connect users with similar interests. Sometimes, they use it to target ads, based on demographics such as gender and age (something Facebook and MySpace also do).

But, in the end, a researcher says there’s really nothing stopping them from matching profile information with public records. It also could be sold or stolen. And all of that could lead to serious matters such as identity theft.

Peter, M12

Value of Social Network -- A Large-Scale Analysis on Network Structure Impact to Financial Revenue of Information Technology Consultants

2011-12-03T12:27:00.003-05:00

Hi, I just found a very interesting study from MIT and IBM reserach about the financial impact of network structures in technology consulting firms.

The study analyzes the relationship between productivity of consultants and their use of social networks. The communication patterns of over 1000 consultants were measured and analyzed over a period of three years. The research team looked at the networks of individual workers as well as project level networks.

The results for individual workers show that betweeness centrality and strong connection to managers positively impact productivity (measured by billable hours). Network size, as measured by in-degrees and out-degrees, does not have an association with performance.

Project network characteristics are overall more dominant in predicting revenue than individual network characteristics. In project teams, betweeness centrality and overall team composition can be associated with project performance. Another interesing finding is that there are inverted U-shaped relationships between gender distribution and project revenue as well as between the number of managers and project revenue.

Have a good weekend!

Nikolas

Relationship between Facebook and Academics

2011-12-03T10:44:00.000-05:00

I found this great article, which analysis the relationship between students GPA and time spent on Facebook.The study is really fascinating how we can relate to one's social activities to one's grade and make amazing discoveries out of the studies.
I am sure all of us spend some time on Facebook but was surprised to learn that the average time students spent on Facebook was 106 minutes per day!!!. We spend almost 2 hours on Face book was definitely amazing to know. We keep cribbing , no time no time...Now we know where most of our time goes :-)

Another surprising finding was, time spent on engaging in some Facebook activities such as sharing links and checking up on friends was positively related to GPA while posting status updates was negatively related. I wonder, how these two activities are different from one another.You are ultimately spending the same amount of time on both the activities. Ultimately, it is up to the user, what best he wants to extract out of the technology.The study highlights the pros and cons of the Facebook usage and provides a insight how educational institutions can extract greatly out of such media.

This study closely relates to the SNA that we did in the class. After reading this article, it becomes more clear how we can analyse and interpret social networks. I have pasted the link to the article below. Enjoy the reading.

Here is the link:
http://reyjunco.com/wordpress/pdf/JuncoCHBFacebookGrades.pdf

Source:

Reynol Junco
Department of Academic Development and Counseling, Lock Haven University

Social network in South Korea

2011-12-03T05:00:00.014-05:00

written by Hyungsik, Kim (M12)

Hi, everyone

I was interested in the influence of social network and how much impact it is having on my country both politically and culturally. Korea is one of the fastest growing IT nation with the fastest internet speed and wireless network connection. Korea also has its own version of facebook called Cyworld (Almost one fourth of the Korean people are using the service).

Recently there was a re-election of city mayor of Seoul and the result was surprisingly the ruling party was defeated. The analysis of the odd result was that the social media like twitter and facebook had huge impact on the election. Politicians now realized how important the social network became in their campaign strategy and how much impact and power it has on our society as a whole.

I tried to find some article about present Korean social network environment and gained some insights from below websites and want to share with you.

1. Korea has one of the most frequent social network users online worldwide.
(From the research done by Ipsos Insight a few years ago shows that Korea is No.1 in frequency of social network website visitors followed by Brazil, China, Mexico and US)

- Source :
(Report) South Korea tops in social networking
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/07/report-south-korea-tops-in-social-network-us-fifth.ars

2. The influence of the foreign social services like twitter and facebook is growing inside Korea, so domestic firms are struggling with the competion.

-Social networks in South Korea : TGIF v the Naverland gingerbread house
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/10/social_networks_south_korea

3. The regime wants to strengthen its hold on the control of social media and the people feel resentment on such a regressive goverment policy.

-South Korea boosts review of social media
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/02/world/asia/south-korea-social-media/index.html

[Conclusion]

The fastest growing influence of social network and its impact on the society should not be underestimated. The social network is forming a new and different types of political power. The future leaders should be aware of its nature and possess necessary skills and analytic knowledge to cope with the change. This skill will be also very useful and critical when MBAs grow to become a middle manager inside the company.

[Other links and sources]
- Current status of online social networking in Korea : preliminary report presented at the 6th Asia Pacific Internet Research Alliance (APIRA) International Conference, 2009
http://www.apira.org/data/upload/APIRA-6_Online_SocialNetworking_Korea_2.ppt_HI49go.pdf

- Cyworld: South Korea's leading social network
http://www.squidoo.com/cyworld

-Massive Korean Social Network CyWorld Launches in US
http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/27/this-is-nuts-cyworld-us-opens-for-use/

The network of global corporate control

2011-12-03T02:47:00.001-05:00

Good morning everyone,
I want to share with you a study regarding the concentration of corporate finance and how the structure the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition
and financial stability.
It is a mathematical analyzes of the global financial network and what is surprisingly to discover is that we are talking about a very high concentrated industry. About 80% of the control of network is concentrated on a limited number of transnational companies, There is a large ‘core’, containing 1347 corporations each of whom owns directly and/or indirectly shares in every other member of the core. On average, each member of the core has direct ties to 20 others; as a result, about 3/4 of the ownership of firms in the core remains in the hands of firms of the core itself.
The study was made before the crash of Lehman Brothers, but nothing changed fundamentally since then. Please look to the diagram from page 4 with the core of this invisible network wrapping around the world. Do you see any connection with the new social movement “Occupy Wall Street”?

http://www.infocon.ro/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/The-network-of-global-corporate-control.pdf

Crisis Management using Social Media

2011-12-02T19:50:00.007-05:00

Crisis management requires timely compilation and analysis of a large number of spatial data sources for situation assessment and decision-making. Businesses and public relations practitioners must now be prepared to act at a moment’s notice, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If a business isn’t prepared to act immediately, the issue can manifest itself online, going from perhaps a minor issue to a major crisis in a matter of minutes.

Two key components of any successful crisis management are

· Preparation
· Communication

Once a crisis is upon the company , there is little time to think, much less to plan. Crisis plan needs to reflect on how the company will communicate about the crisis and deal with it.The good news is, it’s not that hard to create a plan. In fact, the most important things you need to know were modeled for you in kindergarten. Remember those fire drills? The simple but critical idea was that everyone should know exactly what to do and where to go when a crisis happens, and to practice it even when the possibility of an actual crisis seems remote. Same idea applies to social media. While standard crisis communication tools like press releases, press conferences, and video press releases are still important, social media has its own resources that can help you get the word out in a crisis.

Example: Two Domino’s employees engaged in several health department violations, recorded their activities and posted them to YouTube. The videos quickly “went viral” and consumers all over the web were exposed to Domino’s employees doing a variety of unseemly things to their pizza.

Domino’s Response: Domino’s, in an effort to not draw attention to the video, waited days to respond, and did not bring on additional resources to help. Eventually they started a Twitter account and published an apology video on YouTube, but the damage was already done. Domino’s eventually was able to get the videos removed from YouTube, but did not realize that a majority of the dialogue related to the story was actually happening on Twitter.

Damage: Domino’s stock price dropped 10% over the week costing shareholders millions.

Key Takeaways

1. Quick Response is crucial

2. Address all available channels

3. Have an employee policy on Social Media

Preliminary Assessment of the Crisis

1. If you’re monitoring social media, and you suspect a crisis is emerging that you don’t already know about; start by gathering information about the source and content of the crisis.

2. Is it a customer complaint on a blog?

3. Is it a post by an influential analyst getting picked up on Twitter?

4. Is it one person shouting out to the universe, a percolating dialog, or a raging fire?

5. Is it an opinion: someone hates your company, or a fact: your product blew up and hurt someone? You don’t want to go into crisis mode on every customer complaint that can be managed by engagement.

6. If the emerging story is unclear, and you have the authority and opportunity to engage, take an approach of discovery.

7. Diffuse Customer complaints on blogs by early engagement.

8. If you have an internal crisis that has not yet become public, work with your PR team to craft a traditional pre-emptive disclosure. Then consider how social media can best be integrated into the approach.

After the Crisis Hits

1. Deploy / buy a keyword across major search engines

2. Create and optimize a variety of multimedia content to help tell your story in multiple ways

3. Advertise online with crisis messaging (as appropriate)

The Proactive Approach:

1. Start getting engaged now: Build social relationships with business communities.

2. Build agility among the key departments in company to react.

3. Real time Intelligence: The more sophisticated your tracking experience, the more you’ll be able to discern real threats from fire drills.

4. Create landing pages with neutral and generic language to optimize search traffic. When a crisis hits and someone Googles it, you’ll already be ready with a page in the top results.

5. If you have a blog, write posts that point to your news item and your dedicated page. If you have a Facebook group, and Twitter handles, do the same.

6. Some SEO experts recommend buying search terms, and even domains, with generic crisis terms to ensure search engine positioning when something goes down.

7. Maintain a Facebook, Twitter Crisis group id which is different from the Corporate id. This would ensure that focussed attention from the Company during crisis.

Conclusion: A simple way to approach a crisis situation is to be forthcoming and honest. Communicating to your internal audiences in a timely matter is equally important as employees, board members and shareholders are frontline communicators and need to be reassured that the crisis will be overcome.

References

http://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/staff/hart/pubs/40%20Rosenthal,%20t%20Hart%20&%20Kouzmin.pdf#page=7

http://www.igi-global.com/article/factors-influence-crisis-managers-their/47325

http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2009/04/20/dominos-response-offers-lessons-in-crisis-management/

Working in the Connected World: Social Capital — The KillerApp for HR in the 21st Century

2011-12-02T09:52:00.003-05:00

This article “Working in the Connected World” by Valdis Krebs states that not the sum of individual employees that provides an organizations competitive advantage. According to Krebs, the unique interconnectivity of the individuals will provide some economic players with an advantage over those who are not so well connected.

Krebs assigns the role of managing these networks to the HR department of the organizations. In order to do this, HR must not only consider the vertical, but also horizontal and diagonal relationships within the organization. The focus is shifting from strictly internal connections to internal and external connections to all stakeholders. The article states four key areas where HR will need to map, monitor and mold social capital: Identification, Development, Retention and Enhancement.

Even though this article was published in 2000, I believe it still holds true today. I just wonder how many HR department have seen this chance to significantly contribute to the competitiveness of the organization and have reacted accordingly. What have HR departments done to adapt?

Holger

http://orgnet.com/HumanCapitalSocialCapital.pdf

Social Networking in HealthCare Sector

2011-12-02T05:46:00.002-05:00

Given the fact that people use their networks,both on and offline, to get information and support before and after consulting their doctors, I would like to provide readers a snapshot of Social Networking’s current and potential impact on healthcare industry.

For example,the Company PatientsLikeMe which is being considered as one of the 15 companies that will change the world according to Surveys, enables members to track disease progress, access disease information and learn from the real-world experiences of other patients with the same medical condition.Members can share their findings with patients, health care professionals and industry organizations that are trying to treat the disease.

Recommend the reader to read the below article from a Conference held on the way Social Media can change HealthCare.

http://healthworkscollective.com/sharpjw1/24899/social-media-can-change-healthcare-medicine-20-conference-takeaway

Research shows maintaining healthy friendships and relationships is a crucial aspect in leading a more healthy life. Furthermore, new advancements in medical research and treatments can be shared through patient networks and forums.Feeling less alone and isolated will help give patients the strength to fight disease and support others who are doing the same. To see this in action, check out sites like WEGO Health and PatientsLikeMe.
Needless to say,there will be challenges for doctors and other professionals looking for the right way to implement social media, but it’s a learning experience, one with the potential for huge advantages which will redefine the Doctor Patient Relationship.

References:http://www.patientslikeme.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PatientsLikeMe

http://www.fastcompany.com/mic/2010/profile/patients-like-me

http://www.deloitte.com/us/debates/lifesciencessocialmedia

http://www.socialmediaforhealthcare.com/

Please feel free to comment/suggest
Thank you
Manish

Social Network Management Enhances

2011-12-02T04:40:00.001-05:00

http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v77/v77-111.pdf

Risks versus rewards

2011-12-02T03:37:00.005-05:00

For most of the users social network Medias are seen as positive. In doing so potential risks might be ignored.
Today it will be very difficult to stay up to date if you ignore them completely, but these tools are another step, where private life and business life melting more together. But it is sometimes important to draw the line and to allocate certain information only to dedicated groups.
Further you should protect your family from the risks of social networks in being a shining example in using it in a proper way.
In using social medias everybody should be at least aware of potentials risks, in order to minimize them the during using these tools. I have attached a first article and many more can be found, but each person should draft their own risk matrix.

http://socialtimes.com/5-social-media-risks-for-companies-and-employees-and-how-to-prevent-them_b14745

Marco Schumann, HHL MBA class of P7

10 Social Networking Tips For CIOs

2011-12-01T14:09:00.001-05:00

An interesting link on Social Networking for the Chief Information Officers.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/232200558

The Facebook Nation

2011-11-30T18:34:00.002-05:00

Hi,

here is an article dealing with Facebook's influence in politics and the boundaries to it.

Marginals vs Centrals

2011-11-30T16:33:00.004-05:00

Hey,

the study about the communication in Kibbutz I mentioned today in class was acctually not done by Granovetter but by Weimann. Sorry, I confused something there.

The link is unfortunately in German but I am going to summarize the main idea. Weimann observed the communication in Kibbutz and devided the people into three groups: marginals, centrals and others. The centrals are very dominat in the intragroup communication and have - not surprisingly- a lot of strong ties within the group. The marginals are not very important for the intragroup communication but have weak ties to other groups in the Kibbutz and therefore are very important for the intergroup communication. The centrals are so connected within their group that they are not connected with people from other Kibbutz. So the marginals are important to retrieve information from the outside. The type of information was divided in three different groups: romour, news, product information.

Another interesting point is that without the marginals the influence of the centrals would be limited to their own group but through the ties of the marginals to other groups they widen their influence.

In my opinion this study underlines the importance of loose or so called weak ties and that is after all what we often have in social networks. Therefore social networks seem to be the ideal way of retrieving new information.

See you guys

Felix

http://books.google.de/books?id=yqNu-x1VsMgC&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136&dq=Weimann+1982+kibbutz&source=bl&ots=VoyePWsPAS&sig=06BqDuWdG3dMhlkAYuCW_O5GrLc&hl=de&ei=NaDWTobjGMzPsAbf36j9Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Social Media and Hierarchy of Needs

2011-11-30T16:30:00.000-05:00

Initial Findings of the Consulting Firm Case Study

2011-11-30T14:05:00.006-05:00

Dear All

Here are my initial findings from the Consulting Firm Case study:

1. The requirements are to cross-train resources both in the US and the Europe region (flexible and agile).

2. Need to identify key resources in the organization who can become the key drivers and enablers of this change process. Early adopters have a huge role to play in the change process. Hence, they need to be carefully shortlisted by the Management.

3. I don't say that we have 100% data to start with. However, I feel that we may not need 100% data to start our initial analysis for the given task. Once, the change control board is identified there could/would be few other unknowns which can/will surface to give a new dimension to the problem/solution. So, my recommendation is to take phased actions to ensure that we are atleast moving to the next stage of the unknown.

Having stated the objectives above, here are a few data points which I think that would/could be useful in our initial phase of going ahead with the implementation:

1. Identification of the Key Levers/Players in the Organization in terms of communciation / information-flow. Please refer to the below shot for their names:

2. Identification of the key enablers/bridges between the Practice Areas and Regions. These are potential key players for the Change Control Board. Please refer to the below shot for their names:

3. Also, the Management needs to identify the sources from where the crucial organizational information is not coming up the hierarchy (eventually resulting in Management oversight). The datapoints with a lower alpha attenuation have been considered for the same. With this information in hand, Management can develop a framework to increase the alpha attenuation levels (eventually resulting in better performance).Please refer to the below shot for their names:

These are my initial findings on the assignment. Please feel free to discuss or comment on the same.

See you tomorrow!

Cheers!

Manish

Social Media – Innovation Prize 2011 for Deutsche Bank

2011-11-30T14:04:00.001-05:00

Bank of America’s Google Plus Page Appears ‘Brandjacked’

2011-11-30T14:01:00.000-05:00

From Social Networks to Collaboration Networks -IDEAS FOR LEADERS

2011-11-30T10:55:00.002-05:00

Social networking intro

2011-11-30T10:18:00.000-05:00

Leveraging Social Networking for Social Media Marketing

2011-11-30T01:57:00.003-05:00

Social Media Marketing: Strategy to Commerce
Lee Odden
For companies trying to make sense of social media and online marketing, it’s important to take a step back from all the “TwitFaceBlogTubeIn” mania for a second and look at the nature of how these things are going to work for the overall business.

There are many questions that need answers: ”Should we develop a strategy first before engaging?”, ”Should we experiment and develop a strategy as we go?”, “Will it ever be OK to ask customers if they want to buy directly within social channels or will we always have to tiptoe around the subject?”

Here are a few considerations to help answer those questions and establish the framework for a sustainable and successful social media marketing program.

Social Media Strategy: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Having some idea of what measurable goals and business outcomes you’re after is essential for planning resources and forecasting outcomes. This is true with any kind of marketing and is certainly the case with social media.

I polled a number of industry smarties on social media strategy vs. tactics and while there was some distance between the approach Guy Kawasaki preferred and that of people like Chris Brogan, the consensus was that developing an approach is essential for planning, implementation, accountability and measurement of success.

The formation of a social media strategy is a ripe opportunity for creativity and certainly shouldn’t get in the way of getting started. Gaining consensus about social strategy within a corporation could easily create a bottleneck. A strategy that calls for experimentation with iterative improvement in the context of overall goals, approach, tactics, audience and an effort to measure success is more likely to be implemented and gain support.

Social Media Marketing Tactics: The best mix of tactics needs to tie into the plan for reaching business goals. Whether it’s “Better engage with our customers” to “Filling the top of the sales funnel”, an understanding of audience preferences and behaviors will lead to the right tactical mix.

A lot of companies take the path of least resistance and go for what I like to call, “The Social 5-Pack” of: Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, YouTube and LinkedIn without thinking through tactics. For example, one common question often I hear is, “Is a LinkedIn group a better use of time and resources or a Facebook Fan Page?”

What the marketer might want to ask is, “Where do social networking vs. blogging vs. microcontent vs. media sharing fit in the context of our social media goals?” Then do the research and implement a listening program to discover which social networks, media sharing sites or blogging communities the target audience is present and participating in. That homework will answer the question about Facebook vs. LinkedIn and any other social communities where customers spend time.

Social Media Process: “Companies who start with implementation are at risk”, is a great quote from Jeremiah Owyang in his recent post, “A Pragmatic Approach to Social Business“. There he lists a checklist of 8 steps that form a process for approaching social media. Jumping into tactics can send a company in a very unproductive direction. Working through a strategy, tactics and developing processes leads to efficiencies, scalability and social engagement that is true to the business goals.

We’ve published a social media checklist that can serve as a prompt for companies to gather the information necessary to make smarter decisions about how their organizations can incorporate social media in their marketing and communications mix.

Process with social media marketing is important for a variety of reasons ranging from quality assurance to accountability. How can an organization scale its social media efforts without some kind of processes in place? Redundant processes can often be automated by software. Processes also outlive internal social media subject matter experts who move on to other opportunities.

From a personal process perspective, take a look at Tac Anderson’s daily routine as a social media strategist, which he calls a “workout”. In addition to planned activities and tactics, there’s room for putting out fires or handing spontaneous situations. In the end, a routine or process helps keep social media marketing tactics on track over time.

Social Commerce: Social Media that Leads to Sales: Question - What’s the ROI of Social Media? Answer – What’s the ROI of having a phone system in your office? That phone systems facilitates communications for a wide variety of reasons that are important to the functioning of the business from product/service inquiries to hiring new employees to customer service.

Social media in a business sense, is technology that facilitates communications, sharing and connecting brands with customers. For the most part, people buy from those they like and social media helps build, maintain and improve those relationships.

So how does social media influence or result in sales? A helpful post on BarnRaisers summarizes several studies that show exactly that. Click on the link to see the post (How Social Media Drives Sales Relationships). I’ll also summarize them here:

Facebook - “The top reasons people press the “Like” button on Facebook is to have a sales relationship with a brand - either to receive promotions & coupons (40%), get updates on upcoming sales (30%) and show their support for companies (39%).” – ExactTarget 2010.

Twitter - “For over 40% of the time people are on Twitter, we spend it learning about products and services, listening to what others have to say and giving opinions. That explains why over 20% of the time we’re on Twitter, we’re ready and willing to buy directly off Twitter.” – Edison Research 2010.

Social Networks – “For every hour we spend on online, we spend the most amount of time on social networks, almost 15 minutes of every hour. Roughly half of the time (approx 6+ mins), we are seeking out products and services and looking to have a sales relationship with brands.” Nielsen 2010.

As more brands include commercial offers in the social experience they provide for customers, those customers will become increasingly comfortable with the notion of social commerce. At the same time, more social features are being added to ecommerce websites. In the way that blogs and Twitter accounts are expected features of brand websites, so will social commerce functionality.

Building a flexible strategy that considers business goals and the people to engage will help marketers identify the best mix of tactics for their social media marketing program. Developing processes from a corporate and an individual standpoint will help sustain, not stifle, social engagement activities in the long run. Start by building community and relationships. Listen, respond and create value. Monitor and analyze for opportunities to implement social commerce features, but don’t rush it.

How have you incorporated social media into your business processes? What are you doing to create more sustainable social participation within your organization?

Social Networking for Small Businesses

2011-11-29T16:40:00.004-05:00

Written by Daniel Travis – Brown

Promoting your small business online can be a massive contributing factor to an increase in traffic and sales to your company website. As time has progressed social networking website have encouraged millions onto the internet; the total number of worldwide internet users has grown by 480.4% since the year 2000 with the latest count clocking an amazing 2,095,006,005!

The world has become more connected than ever before and with social networking sites being used daily by users across the globe who are able to share and link information to each other, what better place to promote your products or services?

Look at the tools you have at your disposal on Facebook alone; you can have people ‘like’ your company, social status updates and a whole range of other posts you may choose to make. This is massively useful; someone who sees a friend of theirs has ‘liked’ a particular product or post is far more likely to click it and check it out themselves.

Facebook promotions are a fantastic means of reaching out to a potentially limitless audience, so be sure to give the people on your ‘friends’ list a reason to ‘like’ your page or product. Promote a prize giveaway; a lucky user will be picked from the list of people who like your page or request to add you to their ‘friends’ list. From this their friends may be drawn to your profile and decide to enter the competition too; and so on.Let’s assume we own a company that sells bathroom suites ; we have a new range of whirlpool baths in stock and we want to promote these products as much as possible. A great starting point is to ensure our own company website (let’s call it dannysbathrooms.com; not the greatest domain but you get my point) is full of great content and we’re displaying our new whirlpool baths nice and clearly on the appropriate page. Now any posts we make on Facebook about these baths can be linked to our whirlpool baths page on dannysbathrooms.com.

Now we encourage our friends to like our page with our competition; which in turn will inevitably draw in Facebook users from each of their friends list, if they view our profile and spot the easy-to-enter competition they are almost certainly going to enter at the price of clicking a ‘like’ button. While our Facebook page is popular we can use this opportunity to drop some posts about whirlpool baths and other possible sales and discounts with a link though to dannysbathrooms.com.

Remember to interact with any ‘friends’ that comment on our page. Don’t be too serious, if they wish to engage you in conversation or make an enquiry about a product then give them what they want. This will also help to humanise our brand and make us more appealing to any new visitors on our profile.

Remember, build some serious hype around your social network profile then drop links to great offers or new products you have on offer. Give incentives to gain extra likes and in turn, extra followers and friends; these tactics can work just as well on twitter but you’ll have to be a little more smart with your posts as you have a limited character count on your posts.

Will the Future of Social Business Networking be Google, Facebook?

2011-11-29T14:04:00.001-05:00

Will the Future of Social Business Networking be Google, Facebook?

By J. Angelo Racoma (@jangelo) Nov 18, 2011

An interesting question crops up time and again: Will today's major social networks turn to the enterprise market in the future? Business-oriented social networks are already popular among organizations and companies. But as Facebook and Google+ run out of markets to grow into, they will need to find more growth areas from within, and the enterprise is one big market ripe for the picking.

Technology evangelist Robert Scoble thinks that Google+ and Facebook are headed toward the enterprise social networking business sometime in the future. Speaking at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Santa Clara, CA, Scoble says there is big potential for the likes of Google+ and Facebook for use as internal corporate communication networks. Popular public social networks are already being used by professionals as communication tools, whether or not their respective companies already run their own enterprise social network, so there's no reason for either Google or Facebook to not turn to these markets.

Social Networking as an Extension of Google Apps

In terms of integrating enterprise services with social networking, Google may be in the best position, with its enterprise Google Apps offering and Google+. Google's SaaS email, documents, chat and web CMS platform will be a good mix with a private implementation of Google+. Google may already be looking into attracting businesses into joining Google+, although not as a private network. The social networking service recently opened its doors to business use, with the introduction of Google+ Pages for brands and businesses. As a private social network, the Circles way of sharing content and sorting friends might fit perfectly with the needs of a private social network.

More Than Just Numbers

Meanwhile, for Facebook, the need to consider private business-oriented networks might come as more of a necessity than innovation. Facebook is already at about 800 million active users and growing. But at some point, Facebook will run out of an Internet-using population to expand into. As such, the company will need to focus within its existing user base and provide more value-added services to remain relevant. Scoble said that Facebook is "going to have to convince people to do more on the service," which will be a smarter way to make money than simply growing its audience.

In the end, it's a matter of finding the right timing, hiring the right people and doing it the right way. Scoble thinks Facebook will have an advantage in terms of hiring the right talent to convert the network into an enterprise-grade offering. Until then, Google and Facebook will need to heavily invest in turning their networks into an enterprise-collaboration platform, which may be best beta-tested through internal use. The prediction: Google is likely to launch Google+ for enterprise by 2012 and Facebook by early 2013.

New Trends in Social Networking

2011-11-29T12:47:00.003-05:00

Found article below from Starr Hall, who is an international speaker, author, publicist and social networking expert. She's the CEO of StarrHall.com, a consulting and training company based in Avila Beach, Calif.

Just when you thought you had Twitter down, a basic understanding of LinkedIn and you finally know how to upload a video to YouTube, I present my take on social trends that are on the horizon next year. From plug-ins to location-based marketing initiatives to the move to higher bandwidth, there's change afoot in the world of social media.
I've compiled these 10 trends from my own observations, the opinions of my fan base online and other experts. Consider this a starting point for what to incorporate in your own social-media strategies in the New Year.
1. Location-Based Marketing: Location services will grow in popularity as people get more comfortable checking in to a business. This will be the result of enhanced safety features -- such as privacy options that block your location from public view -- and more enticing brand offers.It's time to acquaint yourself with sites and applications such as Foursquare, Facebook Places and Gowalla. These sites will help you better target prospects' likes and interests, pique interest and influence purchase decisions by offering discounts, promotions or giveaways when they “check in” to your business.
2. Video Platforms: YouTube might be one of the largest user-generated video-sharing sites on the Internet today, but other platforms will begin to surface that are more business-focused, easier to market videos on and not as crowded. Sites like Viddler, Vimeo and Dailymotion will gain momentum with a stronger focus on live streaming on sites such as interactive broadcast platform Ustream, or streaming straight from blogs.
3. Text Campaigns: As the mobile arena grows, small businesses will continue to move marketing campaigns to mobile phones. MessageBuzz and Enowit offer tiered levels of service and free demo accounts that allow you to test a mobile-marketing campaign. Start by incorporating a mobile widget onto your site to help collect mobile numbers through an automated system and create campaigns specific to area codes or regions.
4. For Cause Tweet-a-thons: A Tweet-a-thon is a fundraising campaign on Twitter for which users encourage their followers to tweet about and donate to a particular charitable cause over a specific period of time. These initiatives will gain in popularity as savvy entrepreneurs capitalize on the relationship-building advantages of social media and the good publicity that comes with giving back.
I recommend you choose a cause for 2011 and keep your campaign simple. An excellent book with how-to information and ideas on how to tweet successfully is Unmarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging by Scott Stratten, president of the marketing firm Unmarketing.
5. The Move to Higher Bandwidth (4G): Say goodbye to 3G. The use of higher bandwidth will not only be a necessity but a demand from busy consumers.
Widely becoming recognized with carriers such as Sprint and soon to be Verizon, 4G speed allows marketers to get the message out faster with quicker download times. Jump on this bandwidth wagon early and incorporate it into your 2011 marketing plan.
6. Wordpress-Based Websites: Open source publishing application Wordpress will become the platform of choice. Why? It makes it easier for websites to implement search-engine optimization at little to no cost with plug-ins, which add specific capabilities to software applications.
To stay competitive, I recommend that you consider moving your website to a Wordpress platform. These sites are user-friendly and do not require knowledge of HTML code.
7. Plug-ins: The use of plug-ins will proliferate, with thousands of new options surfacing monthly.
An increasingly popular plug-in is Scribe which monitors and scores your keywords and updates to your site automatically to increase results with your search-engine optimization.
8. Review Sites: Websites dedicated to customer reviews will dominate the social media landscape. Consumers want to be heard, and more importantly they want answers. Sites such as Groubal.com, will achieve this by consolidating common user-submitted complaints and presenting those petitions to businesses, demanding answers for their wrongdoings. Consumers are even creating blogs specifically about teaching people how to complain effectively.
This is another reason to monitor conversations about your products and services online. Moving into 2011, make sure you have a plan for how to respond to positive and negative reviews. Remember to respond immediately. Reviews will start to spread like wildfire with these sites.
9. Monitoring Conversations: Show your customers you're listening and responding. Make it a New Year's resolution to set up online monitors for your company.
You can choose social-media dashboards or keyword-alert services. There are paid dashboards such as Radian6 and ObjectiveMarketer as well as free service sites Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. These dashboards not only allow you to monitor but participate in live conversations.
If you haven’t set up Google monitors yet, they're free. Go to www.google.com/alerts.
10. Presentation Platforms: As teleseminars become overused and tired, interactive web seminar platforms will step in to fill that market need.
New presentation platforms such as SlideRocket.com and Prezi.com are incorporating easy-to-build presentation tools with social media, live feeds and video. People online want to see the presenter, not just listen over a bridge line.
Choose your presentation platform for 2011 and make sure that it not only streams well but also allows for immediate interaction and cutting-edge presentation tools.

Article about Supporting Knowledge Creation and Sharing in Social Networks

2011-11-27T12:20:00.003-05:00

Article about social Network and knowledge sharing in organizations

2011-11-27T05:36:00.002-05:00

Six degrees of separation? Think again

2011-11-22T13:25:00.002-05:00

Very interesting new research on the narrowing distance between us all, thanks to Facebook.

2011-11-09T00:17:00.000-05:00

Below you will find an article from the Wall Street Journal. My Lebanese friend Mark, created an application for iphone that allows people to capture and immediately send out a "Signal" about an event that is taking place before their eyes. Check it out and make sure to download the app!

Signal - The new iphone application!

Possibilities for Using Social Network Analysis to Connect African Scholars to the Larger Academic World

2011-10-29T22:52:00.010-04:00

Sarah Doerrer

Introduction / Background

I have a strong, ongoing interest in the African K-16 education pipeline. I spent all last year doing the coursework for my dual degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where I am pursuing an Ed.M in International Education Policy. During that time, my thesis idea crystallized and it's a topic near and dear to my heart, which I was able to incorporate in a number of papers there.

That being said, here is the ‘umbrella’ question I would like to explore, followed by various facets which I'll probably have to narrow:

How effective would various partnerships (study abroad exchanges, co-authorship on articles, etc) be in creating a sustainable revenue stream for African universities?

These institutions are currently dilapidated (none are in the top 500 worldwide), isolated from the worldwide academic community and forced to charge fees to make ends meet, which crowds out many promising but low-income students. These universities must be revitalized in order to ensure African countries have well-educated leaders capable of improving the livelihoods and well being of their nation. When I was working at the Institute of International Education in NYC, one of the programs I worked on was the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, funded by 7 major foundations. This experience really opened my eyes to the central importance of having a strong university system to complement strong primary and secondary systems, especially in the developing world. Without such systems, there often occurs a vacuum of qualified leadership and the country is more susceptible to tyrants and leaders who rule by force rather than wise decision-making and consensus. Other benefits include increasing diversity in those universities, as well as making them more appealing for both competitive students and competitive faculty who want to interact with other scholars from the rest of the world, plus the U.S. would (I hypothesize) benefit a great deal by expanding its study abroad partnerships beyond the 'usual suspects' (still primarily Europe, though growing in Asia and the Middle East); meanwhile, there are very few in Sub-Saharan Africa.

I would like to ultimately earn a fellowship to go in person to explore this topic, specifically to Kenya, in order to interview university officials, students, faculty, and possibly even parents and government officials. I could attempt to survey or interview such people via email or Skype wherever possible. (I am in the process of putting out feelers to promising contacts I have accumulated over the last two years.) I have spoken extensively with Rusty, since he has wide expertise in social network analysis, and have asked him about the usefulness of conducting a such analysis on existing and / or potential relationships between U.S. institutions and scholars and African universities and scholars. We think that depending on how the questions around this topic are framed, it could be a promising avenue through which to explore it. He also suggested a more specific angle, such as networks of co-authorship or citation among African scholars and Western scholars, to consider similar questions of improving African university systems.

Methodology

As I alluded to above, there are a number of sub-questions that may be plausible angles from which to address the broader ‘umbrella’ question and from which SNA strategy could emerge. I have listed three below:

To what degree are Sub-Saharan African academics connected to the broader world of academe in their fields?

a. How to get at this question:

i. Determine whether co-authorship of papers with Western scholars has led to individually authored / published papers later on

b. Likely Steps:

. conduct an extensive Google Scholar search (perhaps narrowed to certain fields of interest of interest to Africa such as international development, education and public health) for co-authored articles with African scholars

i. Note the number of citations for these articles to consider their influence.

ii. Conduct further searching for individually written articles by the African co-authors and note their citations.

iii. Parallel to these searches, create a data set that can be worked into a social network analysis in UCINET / Netdraw in order to consider which universities or more broadly, nations, in Africa are the best “connected” based on the co-authorship variable and using the number of these as strong vs. weak ties

iv. perhaps interview these scholars to consider why they have been able to achieve this level of connectedness

What would be the benefits and costs of creating a study abroad partnership (in which the U.S. school is the sending university and the African school is the receiving university) between ___________ (U.S. school - either specific university or ‘umbrella’ org like SIT) and ____________ (African university such as Makerere, Univ. of Nairobi, etc)?

a. How to get at this question:

i. perhaps a comparative analysis with successful cases, such as universities in China, Eastern Europe, or South Africa

b. Likely steps:

. use study abroad literature to form educated conjectures as to these benefits and costs

i. extensive interviews with study abroad officials in the U.S. and appropriate African university personnel

ii. consider the implications of these benefits and costs and the choices they imply along with recommended decisions

iii. as part of recommendations, use Netdraw to visualize both the existing networks between U.S. and African institutions (perhaps with weakness / strength of ties based on the number of students sent abroad from either institution) and THEN do a corollary visualization depicting a more ideal network, with structural holes filled in and emphasis placed on those who can act as connectors, who may also have eigenvector centrality in the existing network

What has been the legacy of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa? (Has it left African higher education systems better off? What is left to do? What are next steps and is there progress being made on these?)

a. How to get at these questions:

i. a comparison of what projects were undertaken under the PHEA grants and an investigation of what results have come from those projects?

b. (HOW MANY TO LOOK AT, SINCE THERE ARE HUNDREDS?)

c. Likely Steps:

. historical literature review of the mission and principles / goals of the PHEA and its policies / projects

additionally a brief review of the challenges of African higher education systems that initially led to this investment on the part of 7 foundations
follow-up via interviews or web review of the results of those projects (hopefully something empirical) and what other progress they have catalyzed on these campuses

i. ideally at the end of this, would need to make recommendations for where opportunities lie to move forward with the goals of the PHEA that have yet to be fully realized

Preliminary Sources

African Higher Education Collaborative - AHEC (particularly Sabine O’Hara) http://www.africahighered.org/

Boston College’s International Network for Higher Education in Africa http://www.bc.edu/research/cihe/inhea.html

Google Scholar (for citation searches and co-authorship searches) http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?hl=en&as_sdt=0,22

Institute for International Education (IIE) former colleagues and contacts http://www.iie.org/en/Our-Global-Reach

also, IIE Passport resource website http://www.iiepassport.org/

former Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) coordinator (and colleague) Suzanne Grant-Lewis

St. John’s International Recruiter (and co-fellow in 2006-7 with me for the Susan Schiffer Stautberg Fellowship) Clare Lloyd Jones http://www.stjohns.edu/admission/undergraduate/meetcounselors/jonesc.stj

Scholars and Practitioners I met from the 2011 Annual Conference of the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars:

Other study abroad contacts:

School for International Training (SIT) http://www.worldlearning.org/staffdir.cfm
Huffington Post Top 10 Study Abroad Programs (for best practices, especially since Africa is the most under-served region as far as study abroad programming from the U.S.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/29/the-10-best-study-abroad-_n_1065216.html
Harvard Office of International Programs (former employer) http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~oip/study_abroad/contact.html

Challenges

I anticipate that the biggest challenge in this venture (and Rusty has confirmed this in our conversations) will be to determine how to standardize the attributes of the relationships I want to document / promote in a useful way that is both easily understood and substantive. To be honest, I have not yet worked out all the ‘kinks’ for how social network analysis could be useful to these questions of African higher education, but the more I’ve learned about the concepts in this field, the more convinced I become that it has the potential to be an invaluable tool and I would welcome any feedback as to how I might utilize it more effectively.

Proposed Social Network Analysis of Rural Healthcare Providers in India

2011-10-29T13:20:00.000-04:00

(Posted on behalf of J. Evelyn Nanni)

Rural healthcare in India is fragmented and tedious, given various infrastructure challenges and a shortage of qualified doctors. These problems are compounded for the poor, who make less and have a very high opportunity cost for travel to seek good care. In remote areas, unqualified providers fill the gaps. This research aims to determine the value of the informal social network among these providers. In particular, how and why providers connect on medical information or business, and determine what about it can be utilized in public health efforts, especially around four disease areas: tuberculosis, pneumonia, kala azar (visceral lieshmaniasis) and childhood diarrhea.

This research is proposed to help WHP, a global health non-profit that uses telemedicine and a social franchise model to bring care to the poor. WHP is currently working on establishing 400+ franchisees in India’s poorest state, Bihar. A social network analysis would allow WHP to better understand the existing informal networks among providers.

Social Network Analysis would help inform:
• Public health efforts focused on the four disease areas – what links already exist and how can they be exploited?
o How often do rural providers communicate with one another on specific diseases and/or treatments?
• How structural holes can be strengthened or bottlenecks removed so that there are no areas “off the grid” vis-à-vis updated medical information.
• Which providers (Eigenvector) can be most useful in initiating a public health effort that involves all providers in the area?
o Can those with formal training assist or teach those who have no formal training?
• What providers are completely isolated from the rest of the providers in the area (cliques and factions)? Why?
• Which providers would be the best candidates as franchisees?
• Do providers desire more communication with others? How does this vary by level?

Network to be surveyed:
All providers in [TBD] block of the state of Bihar, within 10 km of the central market village. Levels of providers are defined as:
• Rural healthcare provider (trained or untrained, uncertified, working out of own home)
• Rural clinic-based healthcare provider (trained or untrained, uncertified, practice attached to home)
• Board Certified Doctor (MBBS or higher)
• Chemist shop owner (Board certified)
• Pharmaceutical distributor (> Rs10,000 per day / US$250 per day)
• Pharmaceutical stockist (• Diagnostic lab (Board certified)
• Pharmaceutical company representative (Field staff)

A list of all providers in the area will be provided by advance field staff for the research team.

Attributes of network nodes:
• Name
• Age
• GPS location of practice
• Marital status
• Type and level of medical qualification (see above list of levels)
• Size of practice (patients per week)
• Size of practice (income per week, in Rupees)
• WHICH of the following four diseases the has treated in the past month (may select any number from 0-4) and how many instances:
o TB
o Pneumonia
o Childhood diarrhea
o Kala Azar (visceral leishmaniasis)

Network information (will check boxes based on a list of the area’s providers):
• If the provider has referred a patient to the other provider listed
• 1-5 times in the past month
• 5+ times in the past month
• If the provider received a referral information from the provider listed
• If the provider delivered or provided medical information regarding one of the four diseases to the provider listed
• If the provider received medical information regarding one of the four diseases
• If the provider delivered or provided business information to a provider
• If the provider received business or other professional information from another provider

Important information to analyze:
• Density: How interconnected are the providers at each level? Often, if a patient presents symptoms that don’t go away, they will be referred to providers at a higher level. This indicates that providers consider their competitors to be at their own level of training, but this does not preclude communication on the same level. Understanding the network density will help to separate the patient flow (largely one direction, from bottom to top) from communication flow (which may be more complex).
• Eigenvector: Which providers communicate with multiple other providers.
• Bridges and bottlenecks: If providers are bridges between geographically distant providers. Likewise, if providers are bottlenecks, or essentially serve as monopolies of information. I expect that there is no interaction between private and public doctors, but if one or two are interacting, this would be the channel through with public health information and education could be more effectively disseminated.
o In particular, the “weak ties” that may exist between providers as a result of competition could be exploited with new information and trainings.

I look forward to further thoughts on this proposed research.

For Incoming I.B.M. Chief, Self-Confidence is Rewarded

2011-10-28T17:35:00.003-04:00

Interesting NYTimes article about the new CEO of IBM, Virginia Rometty. I was curious about the suggestion the reporter made as a possible explanation for the barriers women still face in attaining C-suite positions within the tech industry:

"Companies have trouble retaining technical women because they are often isolated from influential social networks inside companies, Ms. Simard said. "

I wonder if she or someone else has done an SNA documenting this.

SNA of Networks of Libyan Expatriate Organizations

2011-10-28T14:23:00.005-04:00

I am writing my thesis on Libyan expatriate networks. I could use network analysis to begin to understand how Libyan expatriate networks connect to each other.

Social Network Analysis could contribute to the answering questions in following areas (I'm not ready to hypothesize yet!):

Understanding the nature of connections between groups
Understanding the nature of connections between groups and the National Transitional Council
Inform whether political factions exist and along what lines
Anticipate divides along groups of affiliated people
Look into the distribution of power in new cabinets, ministries, etc

SNA Methodology:
I will use a webcrawler to explore which organizations linked to each other from Feb - October 2011. These links will be the basis for establishing ties between organizations.
Using the data from the webcrawler I will organize the ties in excel in order to enter the data into UCINET. Once in UCINET, I will be able to identify how the organizations are connected and will look at direct and indirect connections, bimodal connections, cliques, factions, k-cores, components, and eigenvectors and other network features.

Understanding how the organizations relate to each other and to the NTC will inform current and emerging thinking on the status and role of returning Libyans and expatriate Libyans.

Methodology for understanding the context and fleshing out SNA with narratives
I will examine individual-level participation in the broader rebellion and in organizations participating in the revolution (because as our opponents insisted in the debate, organizations are, after all, composed of individuals). I will detail individual narratives from expatriates who returned to Libya and those who did not in order to understand motivations on an individual level and to examine how individuals are connected to the organizations. Complementing a network analysis with personal accounts will both help me analyze the network and to dig deeper into issues that emerge out of the analysis. I will mix individual stories that I gather directly with those that are available through news reports, interviews and blogs.

Some materials are widely available. Here's a taste: Janine di Giovanni (writing for Newsweek) traveled to Libya recently and explored the experiences of former expatriates who had returned to Libya. One subject, Huda Abuzeid, reflected on joining the rebellion. "During the start of the Libyan revolution, she was in London editing a film she had made about Egypt. Even as she watched television with “my heart squeezed,” she thought the Libyan revolution “would be over in a week.” Yet she bought a camera, headed to Benghazi, the seat of the resistance, and offered her services. ... She says she always thought she would never get to Libya until she was very old. “I saw my father live with the failed revolution, and now I am living what he could not see,” she says. “I realized, finally, Libya was free.”"

A few preliminary sources:
Libyan Organizations:
http://shabablibya.org/

A number of loosely and perhaps closely bound groups are organized and accessible via facebook, these include The Libyan Uprising Group, Libyan Youth Forum, a women's civi rights organization and many (hundreds?) more.

The International Libyan Communication Group lists 62 organizations who are cooperating with them. The majority of this list are based outside of Libya. Organizations like the ILCG and their list will help me develop a robust group of organizations to analyze.

Coverage of how groups organized within Gaddafi-controlled Libya will help lay the context for the types of group that expatriate organizations would ally with as well as the challenges they faced. For example this article explores how in facing limitations to internet accessibility and under heavy surveillance, anti-Gaddafi networks in Libya organized offline, in face-to-face meetings.

Coverage from demonstration (celebrations) following Gaddafis death this week available for demonstrations took place in Canadian, US and British cities and others.

Other pieces of interest but not directly related.
August 2011. Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote for Al Jazeera English that social-media-based networks are vulnerable to manipulation, for example, governments (Syria and Iran) have used facebook to identify and repress activists.

September 2011. Pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army has attacked websites at a number of US media, government and institutional websites. This mimics the power plays in real time that we witnessed during the Arab Spring. "The first is to deny the online public space from activists and demonstrators in kind of the same way security forces on ground try to deny physical space. In Egypt and in Libya, activists could get around security forces by just going online until they had a critical mass to take to the streets. But in Syria, that's more difficult because the Syrian Electronic Army is making it difficult to come together."

Peace One Day?

2011-10-28T09:22:00.000-04:00

For the past 6 years, I have been part of an international organization - CISV - that promotes peace through non-formal experiential education. Being a global organization with a network that reaches youth and communities within more than 60 countries, we partnered with another like-minded organization - Peace One Day - founded by film maker Jeremy Gilley. Peace One Day works towards raising awareness about the international day of global ceasefire and non-violence, 21 September; a day during which all fighting stops and people who can otherwise not be reached receive vaccination and medication among other things.
We at CISV accepted the 2012 Peace Challenge to use our networks as extensively as possible to spread everyday starting 21 September 2011 the awareness about Peace Day in order to actually achieve GLOBAL truce on Peace Day 2012! With this post, this challenge has been extended to your networks.. carry the wave!

http://www.peaceoneday.org/en/welcome
http://resources.cisv.org/education/categories/PeaceDayChallenge

Ushering peace: Using SNA to nip violent crisis in the bud

2011-10-27T22:40:00.000-04:00

A lot has been written about analyzing social networks to understand life cycle of revolutions and how they can be coordinated better using social network technologies. However, another potential utility for SNA can be found on the other end of the spectrum. Analyzing communities that show early signs of unrest to address issues before they snowball in to a crisis.

The groundwork:

The first step for such a study would involve identifying the community that is likely to have the greatest degree of resentment, the potential to act on it and to identify some of their key demands. Experience shows that certain communities like labor, youth, the unemployed, traders etc. have a more significant role to play in conflicts than say the retirees.

Once a preliminary analysis has been done to identify the target community (which is considered outside the scope of this topic), a demographic analysis would be crucial in framing the questions and identifying the geographical areas to target.

The challenge:

At the outset, the author understands that collecting data under certain circumstances would be a far greater challenge than within an organization where employees are mandated to provide it. The data collecting agency, whether government or NGO, may also be received with hostility and uncooperativeness. The reliability of the data can be a point of concern. These issues, while important and relevant, will have to be the subject of another blog post.

The first step:

Once a target community and the geographical areas have been identified, the next step would be identifying the most efficient way of reaching the member of those communities. Often time this will come in the form of established groups and associations, whether political or non-political, who represent that community. Assuming that these organizations would be open to talking about their issues, the next step would be the actual survey.

The author envisages this to be a four-step, potentially iterative, process (who said crisis management was easy!):

1. Data collection for issue identification.

2. Data analysis for identifying key focus area and brainstorming possible solutions.

3. Follow-up survey to identify mass appeal of possible solutions.

4. Data analysis of follow-up survey. Iterate step 2-4, if necessary.

The survey:

The following would be the broader segments in which such a survey can be divided:

Identifying information:

· Name

· Age

· Gender

· Position in the organization

· Location

· Academic qualification

· Profession (including ‘unemployed’ as an option, if relevant)

· Religious affiliation (if relevant)

Issue identification information:

· Three most significant issues of concern, in order of priority. (This question would not limit the options to pre-defined choices. The analyses of the answer will help determine the key areas of concern.)

The network:

· How frequently have you communicated in the last two months?

o Never

o Occasionally (at least once a week)

o Frequently (more than once a week)

The analysis:

Once the data is available, several important interpretations can be drawn:

· The first and the obvious one would be to do an issue based analysis to identify key focus areas i.e. what is the most pressing issue that needs to be addressed?

· Once the key issues have been identified, the key players will need to be determined. Here in conjunction with an individual’s ‘Position’ in an organization we will need to look at the following attributes of the nodes:

o Eigen vector centrality: Who is the most important node in the network? Does it correspond to the position?

o In-degree: Whom are the most people communicating with?

o Out-degree: Who is reaching out to the most people?

o Any clusters, particularly based on issues or locations?

o Closeness at an organizational level to determine the right people to engage with.

Taking it to the next level:

The survey and analysis can be further extended to look at inter-organizational relations. This will be a key analysis as crises are seldom the results of an effort of one organization alone. The desired information can be extracted from the important position holders in each organization to determine what kind of contacts they share with other peer organizations and then analyze if they are focused on the same issues.

The benefit:

The result of this analysis will be invaluable for agencies to not only determine the issues of substance but to also identify the stated and un-stated decision makers in each of the relevant organizations. Pro-actively collecting this information and doing the analysis can act not only as a control but also a prevention mechanism.

SNA of AMIDEAST NGO's Organization

2011-10-27T22:03:00.003-04:00

Overview: AMIDEAST is an NGO that is located in most countries in the Arab world as well as having headquarters in Washington DC. It is focused primarily on educational development issues for people in the Arab world, especially youth. I had the chance to work for AMIDEAST in Tunisia, and my proposal is designed to perform an Social Network Analysis (SNA) of the AMIDEAST organization.

Objective: This proposal is meant to map out the organizational network and information flows of AMIDEAST in order to learn important information about how people interact with each other, how communication differs from one office to another, and what the key challenges are to improved interconnection and information flows, and what solutions may exist to solve problems identified in the SNA.

Hypotheses: I would imagine that we might see cliques forming between American employees and Arab, local nationals in various AMIDEAST offices. I would also imagine that some offices may have higher degrees of centrality and closeness than others. The issue of how leadership interacts with the rest of the organization would also be interesting to find out. We may also see generational differences with younger employees forming factions or cliques that are apart from older employees.

Method: To use a survey to collect necessary data. After data is collected and mapped through SNA, we could compile data on the average Closeness and Density of each office to compare. We could also look at factions within office to find out who they are and why they are factionalized. We would then look at information flows in the organization to see how people are connected to each other and what gaps and weaknesses may exist in the organizational structure. We could also analyze inviduals to look at Eigenvector and Betweenness scores of people in the network to identify individuals who may be able to act as bridges or leaders for certain objectives and initiatives. We can also look at the attributes and see how people's gender, nationality, age, and other things affect the way they communication and interact with others in the organization.

Survey: Survey questions will capture data on A) the nature of relationships between employees and B) attribute data on employees.

Part A Questions (nature of relationships):

The following questions would require people to answer the question for each other employee in AMIDEAST. If doing so for the whole organization worldwide is too much work, employees could just answer these questions for people in their own office or country.

1) How likely are you to turn to turn to the following person if you need help with something work-related?

a - Not very likely

b - Somewhat likely

c - Very likely

2) How likely are you to turn to turn to the following person if you need help with something life-related?

a - Not very likely

b - Somewhat likely

c - Very likely

3) How frequently do you interact with the following people (list people in AMIDEAST)?

a - Not very likely

b - Somewhat likely

c - Very likely

Part B Questions (attributes):

1) What office are you located in?

a- Washington DC

b- Muscat, Oman

c- East Jerusalem, Palestine

d- Beirut, Lebanon

e- (list all other offices.....)

2) What other offices have you worked at in the past?

a- Cairo

b- Tunis

c- (list all other offices...)

3) How old are you?

a- 20

b- 21

c-22

d-(list all other ages to 75)

4) In what country did you grow up?

a- USA

b- Egypt

c- Qatar

d- (list other countries where AMIDEAST staff come from)

5) How long have you been working at AMIDEAST?

a- 1-3 years

b- 4-6 years

c- 7-10 years

d-(continue in increments of 3 years until reach 30 years)

e- 31 or more years

6) What is your position in the organization?

a- Senior corporate leadership

b- Country Director

c- Assistant Country Director

d- Department head

e- Departmental mid-level manager

f- Administrative staff

g- Teacher

h- Other

7) Do you speak Arabic (formal Arabic or local dialect)?

a- Yes, fluently

b- Yes, some but not fluently

c- No, none or very little

8) What department are you in?

a- Teaching

b- Advising and Testing

c- IT

d- Finance/accounting

e- Other

9) What level of education do you have (highest degree)?

a- High school diploma

b- Bachelors degree

c- Masters degree

d- PhD

e- Other

10) How long have you lived in the country where you are currently working?

a- 1-3 years

b- 4-6 years

c- 7-10 years

d-(continue in increments of 3 years until reach 30 years)

e- 31 or more years

11) Are you male or female?

a- Male

b- Female

12) What is your nationality?

a- American

b- Moroccan

c- Emirati

d- French

e- Iraqi

f- (list other nationalities of AMIDEAST employees)

-Ravi

Proposed Social Network Analysis of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council in Central America

2011-10-27T20:42:00.002-04:00

Overview: Central America, while a diverse group of countries with strong national identities and distinct indigenous groups, is tied together by some overarching environmental, socioeconomic and cultural similarities that can serve as a basis for cohesion between nations in the region. As tourism becomes an increasingly important economic enterprise to Central American countries, alliances like the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) have increased their presence in the area to try and shape the future of tourism in the region. While GSTC members are committed to a similar goal, the lack of communication between companies obscures possible synergies that could exist between members and improve their mutual success in the region.

Question: How can a social network analysis (SNA) of the members within the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) who currently work on community development projects in Central America help improve collaborative synergies between companies to take advantage of each organizations unique skill set and expertise?

Hypothesis: By understanding the expertise of members within in GSTC working on similar projects in close geographical proximity to one another, we can help form mutually beneficial collaborative efforts to better achieve the Council objective of “mainstreaming sustainable tourism” in Central America. (www.gstcouncil.org)

Method: To compile the data, circulating a short survey would suffice, or alternatively attempt to use a web crawler to aggregate data based on the following subjects. For the purposes of brevity and consistency, we will limit ourselves to private sector companies focused on community development projects.

Distribution: The survey will be distributed to the project coordinator and/or the business development coordinator; ideally these individuals will have working knowledge of the projects their organization is undertaking throughout Central America.

Survey: The data will be compiled in two individual sets: Part I is focused on organizational attributes of the company and communication patterns with other council members. Part II concentrates on compiling relevant information about individual projects to be linked under individual nodes.

PART I:

Organizational Size:

Employee size: (10-20), (20-30) (30-40) (40-50) (50+)

Areas of Expertise:

Tourism operations

Educational

Certification Program

Conservation

Wildlife preservation

Business Development

Forest Management

Community Development

Archeology

Patterns of Communication:

Which of these organizations have you communicated directly within the last year?

There follows a list of twenty or so organizations targeted within the GSTC based on operations in community development in Central America. The list would measure communication as follows:

( ) Never ( ) Occasionally ( ) Frequently

PART II:

The second step is to define individual project attributes to tease out similar efforts that may lead to overlap. For the survey, each company would fill out three to five possible nodes (representing individual projects); this would be set in five columns with project focus and country to be ticked consecutively resulting in one node)

Node Attribute Data set:

Community Development Attributes:

Agricultural tourism

Adventure tourism

Archeological element

Lodging

Food

Ecolodges

Ocean and Beach/Aquatic Tourism

Educational Attraction

Educational Services

Educational Tourism

Voluntourism

Scientific

Locations:

Mexico

Guatemala

Honduras

Nicaragua

Costa Rica

Panama

Selling the survey idea to GSTC: We hope to entice the GSTC to participate in our survey by explaining it could be used to increase members’ professional network and facilitate knowledge sharing across the region and within the sector.

The primary value of the survey for the GSTC is not in quantifying the density of the network or focusing simply on identifying connections, but rather highlighting members who aren’t connected but should be based on expertise and similar project involvement. While competition between some members of the GSTC will exclude their desire to directly participate with one another, many companies simply might not know the resources they have available to them under the auspices of the GSTC. Ideally, we would identify these companies to facilitate a transfer of best practices that have historically worked for them in a particular area. We hope to uncover potential benefits that could be realized by shared expertise and increased collaboration to make the GSTC more effective in mainstreaming sustainable tourism in the region.

Mapping Social Movements and Political Parties in Egypt

2011-10-27T01:02:00.003-04:00

Introduction

Much has been written about the proliferation of political parties in post-Mubarak Egypt, particularly in light of parliamentary elections scheduled for November 28. The role of networks in determining the success of social movements (and similarly oriented forms of social protest) has been described and discussed extensively. But can revolutionaries govern as effectively as they mobilize and organize? When called to govern by their supporters, what are the determinants of success?

Background

This summer, I had the chance to visit Egypt and research political party development and infrastructure following Mubarak's ouster. While there, I met with party officials, former members of Parliament, and other activists. I was particularly interested in party organization--how parties elected their leadership, how they recruited and trained candidates, and how they developed their messages. Most of this was new to the people I interviewed. They were quickly able to explain what they didn't want, but they didn't really have a well-constructed vision of the future.

I also discovered that the success of the Revolution was determined in large part by social networks. One activist went so far as to say that the Revolutionary Youth Coalition actually had no political power--save the ability to pack Tahrir Square with protestors with a day's notice. That being said, the Revolution was successful because individuals developed networks that became increasingly impenetrable: they could recruit, communicate, and attract supporters with less fear over time.

Methodology

Let us start with a relatively straightforward research question: how can networks involved in social protest change to adapt to the challenge of governance? SNA can certainly help us find an answer, but the solution might not necessarily lie in extensively mapping individual networks and a knowledge of who people are talking to, and how. The determinants of electoral success are certainly network-oriented, but we're trying to understand how, specifically, a network must adapt given changes to its environment. I would propose the following comparative method.

First, map two networks. The first network should be that of a protest movement--in this case, the Revolutionary Youth Council or the April 6 Movement. Then, map the network of a more organized, established political party. In this case, we might look at Al Wafd--one of Egypt's oldest political parties with an established organizational structure.

Then, compare each network's properties:

1. How does each network conceive of centrality? What's the right mix of centralization/decentralization?

2. In which direction does information/action flow?

3. Do bridges evolve geographically? Functionally? Where are they located? What are the barriers to entry to small clusters?

4. Measure closeness--protestors probably shouldn't be too close to their leaders, but that might not work for a party organization.

5. Reach--does everyone know how the party is faring in different districts/governorates? Can resources be allocated quickly and efficiently?

6. Measure cohesion--perhaps a lack of cohesion degrades a party's message.

All of these factors and properties are important, and will likely allow us to paint a picture of success for nascent parties. The determinants of network success in protest movements differs from that of parties, but there's reason to believe that macro-adjustments to these networks enhance their chances for success.

Conclusions

In this case, I want to again emphasize that while knowledge of the network is important and relevant, this analysis is comparative. We did not talk at length in class about comparative network analyses, but I think a study like this would be timely. In societies like Egypt, we often see the same ancien regime officials emerge and claim power in times of change--largely because they understand electoral success and they have developed structures to perpetuate it. Protest movements might fair just as well if they knew how best to transform their networks when political space is created.

Knowledge Network Analysis of DC-Area National Security Think Tanks to Inform Foundational Grantmaking Strategy

2011-10-26T22:13:00.011-04:00

I spent this summer interning at a foundation in DC, Ploughshares Fund, that does all of its grantmaking in the nuclear weapons / nonproliferation / disarmament / terrorism sphere. Of the handful of foundations engaged in this space, Ploughshares Fund has one of the largest footprints, measured both in endowment size and "bang for the buck" -- the caliber of projects being completed by Ploughshares-backed organizations.

For me, it was fascinating to sit on a perch, so to speak, and see what kinds of interesting and exciting projects our grantees were pursuing with the money we provided them. It also led me to realize the strength of the network that Ploughshares is able to build through its grantmaking. Behold the power of money! Whether working on advocacy campaigns around the national budget or identifying key experts to put together a panel on Iran's nuclear program or Pakistan's accelerated nuclear weapons buildup, the network of think tanks and experts that are funded by Ploughshares could be summoned, often on very short notice, to put together reports, briefings, talking points, and more.

Over the course of the summer, I also noticed that while the think tank community in DC is tremendous, and while the security and defense community within that circle is still fairly large, and even while the nuclear-focused group within THAT is still sizable, the same names and personalities started popping up.

So I've been thinking about the relationships Ploughshares Fund maintains with nuclear-focused experts, both at the individual level and at the institutional level. What I'd like to do, therefore, is develop a knowledge analysis of the DC-area nuclear-focused community by constructing an ego network around Ploughshares Fund. This exercise will help me see not only who the foundation's most frequent individual collaborators are (on presentations, panels, Congressional hearings, books, articles, manuscripts, media appearances, etc.), but also what relationships are strongest between Ploughshares Fund and other institutions, regardless of whether they are actually funded by Ploughshares. That is, what organizations (think tanks, academic research centers, grassroots / advocacy organizations, etc.) come to the forefront in terms of working closely with the foundation?

Answering this question would be crucial to identifying the fields in which Ploughshares could reassess its funding strategy for upcoming fiscal years. From the data gathered and inferences made from the ego network as described above, one could determine those individuals and organizations that collaborate most frequently with Ploughshares Fund. More importantly, the network analysis would help isolate individuals and organizations that currently do not receive funding from Ploughshares.

This creates space to determine what grantees should be funded by Ploughshares in upcoming grantmamking cycles. After all, grantmaking is a two-way street -- while organizations can submit a grant proposal for Ploughshares to consider, the foundation can also take an active approach to grantmaking by aggressively identifying and courting potential grantees.

This network analysis would have the additional benefit of identifying those organizations and individuals that are currently funded by Ploughshares and yet are not close collaborators on projects and campaigns. This insight can assist Ploughshares in deciding which grants should be renewed for the following fiscal year and which should be terminated.

Using network analysis tools to determine a foundation's current and future grantmaking mix would be a novel departure from the current funding process, which does rely on connections amongst individuals and organizations to identify reliable experts, but in a less formal and structured way. As a result, grantmaking in the DC-area security community can be rather hit-or-miss, with some grantees doing amazing things and others remaining fairly static.

Money is a powerful motivator, but I find true effort and brilliant work comes only when strong relationships are built amongst individuals and groups that share not only common goals, but the same level of drive and ambition to achieve those objectives. The knowledge network analysis proposed above would help create those synergies in a more efficient and proactive manner.

Social Networks and Human Terrain

2011-10-25T23:45:00.000-04:00

Social Networks and Human Terrain Analysis

http://www.geospatial-intelligence-forum.com/mgt-home/107-mgt-2009-volume-7-issue-2/930-mapping-the-human-terrain.html

Background

Human Terrain analyses has become a new buzz word in the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense. Human Terrain analyses is the fusion of socio-cultural attributes and relationships depicted in a geospatial format. Since the the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan began, there has been a much greater emphasis on understanding tribes, clans, and various ethnic groups in these war torn countries and their relationship to the ongoing insurgencies.

Area of Interest

I have previously studied al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb( AQIM) and the Sahelian nomadic tribes in Mali, Algeria, and Niger and I believe gaining a better understanding of the social networks, culture, and grievances among the Tuareg and Berber populations would provide a greater understanding of why certain members of these groups support terrorist/criminal networks in the Sahel and Sahara such as AQIM.

Methodology/Key Questions

-Interview and geo-locate the most influential tribes and clans among the Tuareg and Berbers
-Identify their seasonal nomadic and pastoral patterns
-Find out what communication devices are the most prevalent (Radio, Phone, Internet)
-Are connections strong outside their respective ethnic groups
-Identify key leaders and prominent members of each tribe, clan, family and map out their relations to other members of the tribe
-Try to identfy strengths of relationships by the frequency of contact.
-Gather census data from the tribes in order to discern the size and scope
-Identify grievances that would faciliate certain tribes joining sides with AQIM and smugglers

Conclusion

The finished analysis would be be a two part product: one product would consist of the nomadic tribes mapped seasonally to identify the likely locations of these groups; the second product would resemble a link analysis chart depicting the interconnectedness of these Sahelian ethnic groups and tribes. Using these products and understanding the social grievances of each group with the spatial-temporal location would likely be a strong predictor of which groups would be most likely to support AQIM and trans-saharan smuggling activities.

Using SNA to win Political Campaigns

2011-10-25T17:52:00.002-04:00

Introduction
Blake Narendra, a recent poster to this blog and classmate at the Fletcher School, observed that “one of the most fascinating applications for social network analysis is in the political realm.” He proposes an SNA of the visitors to the Obama White House to determine who might have the ear of the President. This analysis would certainly be interesting and add to our understanding of the inner workings of the Executive branch – but it’s import for the administration is debatable. After all, if Obama (or CoS Emmanuel) is the one lending an ear, they probably have a good sense of where they turn to most often for advice.

The purpose of this argument is not to disparage Narendra’s proposed study – in fact, I think it is a fascinating one – but rather to propose another use of SNA that is directly tied to every politician’s goal: winning an election.

Political campaigns are constantly looking for new ways to engage and persuade voters, and the Obama campaign’s use of Facebook was groundbreaking in that regard. On the day he launched his Presidential campaign on February 10th, 2007, Barack Obama’s Facebook page had only a small handful of supporters. By the time the campaign was over, he had around 3 million followers – a number that has ballooned to over 23.7 million since the election. The campaign was able to leverage Facebook and other social media tools as a way of creating a weakly-tied community around the campaign/candidate and to push messages to that community.

Study Overview
Social Network Analysis could be used to make campaigns’ use of social media even more beneficial for campaigns. Candidates are always looking to identify key influencers – those individuals that have a particular power to spread the adoption of a behavior or mindset within a network. A study of the growth of the Obama fan community could reveal some fascinating insights about individuals within the network who might be acting as key influencers. The basic idea here would be to study the diffusion of a behavior (“Liking” Obama on Facebook) within what is, admittedly, a very large network.

The eventual goals of this analysis are two-fold:

Identify specific individuals who acted as key influencers. The campaign (or the re-election campaign) could then reach out to these individuals directly in an attempt to ensure that Obama continues to receive their support as key influencers in their communities.
Create a predictive model based on the attributes of those key influencers that would allow future campaigns to identify key social media influencers. The campaign (or future campaigns) could then use this model to search for additional key influencers online.

Study Design and Methodology
To conduct this analysis, I propose collecting the following information – which is posted by Facebook users (to varying degrees – we would have to live with not having complete attribute information for everyone).

Network Information

Friendship between individuals as indicated on Facebook

Temporal Information

Knowing when individuals first “Liked” Obama is essential for mapping the diffusion of the behavior through the network

Attribute Information
Demographics:

Geographic Location
Age
Gender
Relationship status
“Interested In…” (a potential indicator of sexual orientation?)
Geographical Location

Facebook Usage Attributes:

Number of Facebook friends
Number of Facebook pages liked
Number of Facebook groups joined

Personal Information Posted on Facebook:

Level of Education
School(s) Attended – may be too varied to be useful
Employment Status
Employer(s) – may be too varied to be useful
Religious views
Political views
Networks (as defined by Facebook)
Favorite Music – probably too varied to be useful, but a potentially great predictor of future key influencers or supporter
Favorite Books – probably too varied to be useful, but a potentially great predictor of future key influencers or supporter
Favorite TV Shows – probably too varied to be useful, but a potentially great predictor of future key influencers or supporter

Problems and Pitfalls
One of the over-riding problems with this study proposal is the fact that Facebook data is notoriously difficult to dig into (unless you are a Facebook employee). To the best of my knowledge, the analysis could not be done by someone outside the campaign, but campaign staff might be able to access enough data about individuals who “like” their page to complete the analysis.

A second potential pitfall is the sheer size of the network. 23 million fans, each with (potentially) hundreds of friends and an essentially infinite number of attributes. Mapping a network of that size would require a tremendous amount of computing power. A more practical approach might be to limit the population to a given state (or even a given Congressional district) in an attempt to reduce the size of the network to a more manageable level. The campaign could also examine data from earlier points in time, when the total number of fans was much smaller than it is today.

The third and final consideration is that “friendship” on Facebook is a relatively unsophisticated measure of connection. It does not take into account the strength of ties between individuals, which might yield a more robust analysis of how the “Liking Obama” behavior diffused through the network. However, I would be willing to bet the Facebook has – or is developing – measures of connection strength based on messages and/or wall posts between users. If the research team were able to gain access to this information, it would dramatically strengthen the quality of this analysis.

Conclusion
Overall, this may be a fairly difficult analysis to run, given the difficulties described above. We may be a few years away from developing some of the technical power needed to make this truly robust. However, the potential gains for a campaign from this type of study – even if it is not conducted in the most fool-proof and scientifically rigorous way possible – are huge. Being able to accurately identify key social media influencers could lead to a whole new tool in the persuasion toolbox for campaigns (and, of course, for other behavior-change or information-sharing organizations operating on Facebook as well).

Tweeting terrorism - following extremists in cyber space

2011-10-24T23:59:00.002-04:00

THE SPREAD OF RADICAL AGENDAS

An interesting sub-field of counter terrorism in the post 9/11 world has been the study of radicalization. It is believed that terrorists are influenced through a process of incitement, which begins with

According to a report from the New York City police Department, the Internet is a driver and enabler for the process of radicalization in the west. This is quite intuitive; the internet provides a certain amount of anonymity and more importantly – a virtual meeting place for those with radical ideas. These meeting places carry even more weight in the west, where radical ideologies aren’t taught at schools or places of worship, but rather have to be sought out by the individual.

Since online social networks allow the spread of idea to a large variety of people in a short amount of time, the danger of incitement becomes even stronger. I would be interested in researching the spread of violent and radical ideas on English speaking Twitter accounts. English language twitter accounts are geared towards potential terrorists in the west. What we refer to as "home grown" terrorists live inside the own culture they are trying to attack, they decide to commit their acts not due to the culture they live in or their family upbringing, but rather due to radicalization through like-minded peers and social networks.

THE TWITTER NETWORK

In recent years terror network communications have become less hierarchal and more flat. There has been a shift from few password protected forums to public online communications often maintained by supporters.

I would choose to focus on the most open of tools, and one that has been used frequently by terror organizations – Twitter. The huge advantage of Twitter for researches is that most information is public. Unless a user chooses to privatize his or her account (rare), anyone can see who one follows and who is followed by them, as well as the content of their posts.

KEY CONCEPTS

One key concept in networks that can help us analyze the spread of extreme ideas is Homophily, the tendency of people to associate with others like themselves.[1] This concept is of strategic importance since it leads us to assume that people in the many of the connections are between likeminded people with similar values or beliefs.

Those following terrorist organizations on Twitter are more likely to be influenced by the ideas and distribute them. In the study of diseases, those who contribute to the spread of the epidemic are the susceptible population. Similarly, with the spread of ideas we can assume that those who “carry” the extreme ideology are predisposed to it. What is especially interesting in this case is that as opposed to the study of health, where we know the conditions that help carry a disease ( poor nutrition or hygenie ), the vulnerable human factors that carry ideology are not always known. Therefore, instead of searching for networks in impoverished areas and follow the disease spread, we will instead follow the disease and learn from it about the attributes.

METHODOLOGY

As mentioned, the huge advantage of twitter is that all information is readily available. I would therefore focus on a few accounts associated with terror organizations and assess their followers.

ATTRIBUTES

I would consider the following attribute for each follower:

1. Number of followers:

a. Below 50 – low influence

b. Between 50-250 – medium influence

c. Over 250 – high influence

The number of followers represent how many people have actively chosen to subscribe to this user’s fee, therefore hey are a good measure of influence.

2. Number following:

a. Over 50 – mildly active

b. Between 50-250 – moderately active

c. Over 250 – extremely active

It is important to note that not all the accounts a chosen user follows will necessarily relate to extremism. However, it is safe to assume that the more followers one has, the more active they are on the network in general and are therefore a good measure for the spread of ideas.

Location:

Many people choose to list location on their Twitter account. Even if location is not listed, it is not impossible to use IP addresses to attempt to track down a general area from which a user is tweeting. The location attribute is extremely important because it allows us to observe whether clusters are formed in certain areas. If we see that many followers of an account are centralized in one are, law enforcement can try to contact a religious leader in that region and warn them about the radicalized population. Religious leaders often work with law enforcement to attempt to de-radicalize members of their community that have been identified as potentially harmful.

TIES

I assume this network will be decentralized and scale-free as is often the case with internet connections.

Inedegree and outdegree ties of nodes will be of extreme importance.

1. a. Indegree centrality – how many people follow a certain node?

b. b. Outdegree centrality– how many people does a certain node follow?

Though the strength of these ties cannot be measured, this measurement offers three great advantages for the researcher:

1. Simplicity – the ties are very clear: you wither follow someone on twitter or you don’t. These are not subject to possible manipulations in surveys

2. Identifying Closeness – this is a huge advantage in the field of counter terrorism since it allows us to identify who is connected to people and can reach the most users in the least amount of steps.

3. Density – identifying whether a network is dense or not can have great implications in the field of Counter Terrorism. It will allow us to assume how well connected and organized a movement is, or whether it is made of loose nodes that are not necessarily all communicating with each other frequently.

ADVANCED RESEARCH

Advanced research can also measure tie strength by taking into account which users are communicating with each other. Once again, the advantage of this method is that all communications on Twitter are public, though the collection of data would be time consuming.

Collecting data on a number of user interactions would allow us to re-categorize and examine tie strengths: Which users communicated more than once? Which ones communicate on a weekly or monthly basis? In addition, directed and undirected closeness can show us who receives more messages (can imply that this person is a central source of information) and who sends more messages (this person is more eager to collect information)

CAVEATS

It is important to remember that this research, like many, has some caveats that must be taken into account. Most importantly, it is important to recognize that not all followers of terrorist Twitter accounts are necessarily extremists. In addition, even if one individual appears to be well connected, it does not mean this is grounds for action for law enforcement. However, as I mentioned, we have much to learn regarding density, location clusters and closeness from information that is 100% public, it just needs to be sorted!

[1] Valenta, Thomas, Social Networks and Health: Models, Methods, and Applications, Oxford Press 2010

Using SNA to spread knowledge of a language

2011-10-23T20:40:00.004-04:00

While South Sudan rejoiced when it became the world’s newest country in July, 2011, it was clear that the new state had a long road ahead before it could prove itself as a viable nation. In order to foster a national identity, South Sudan needs a focused approach to creating a nationalist sentiment and feeling of unity. An important factor in this regard is choosing a new national and official language. Earlier this month, South Sudan announced English as its new official language. Although there is a clear rationale for this choice (distinction from the North, ease of international communication), it also presents a unique challenge; currently only 8% of South Sudanese speak English proficiently[1]. To rectify this severe capacity gap and ensure that the South Sudanese language choice becomes a unifying, and not a divisive factor, social network analysis has an important role to play.

To the best of my knowledge, social network analysis has only been applied to pre-existing linguistic groups, rather than the dissemination of a new language among a population. Perhaps because the formation of a new country is so rare in this era, there is little precedent for a countrywide effort to build proficiency in a language as widely and quickly as South Sudan aims to.

In her book Language and Social Networks, published in 1980, Milroy addressed the social networks of Belfast, Northern Ireland as they related to particular vernaculars. While this research is not entirely applicable to the spread of a new language, it confirms the significance of language in structuring social networks and building identities. Milroy comments,

“Haugen hints at one obvious linguistic consequence of these changes in network structure, noting that ‘the modern nation state…extends some of the loyalties of the family and the neighbourhood or the clan to the whole state. Language and nation have become inextricably intertwined” (186)

Given that language is perhaps uniquely positioned to have such a unifying effect, I am particularly interested in how the new Government of South Sudan will facilitate the spread of English through the country in an effective and conflict sensitive manner. A well-designed Social Network Analysis could be a crucial step in identifying the best ways to achieve this.

Currently, the IIEP, a branch of UNESCO, is working with the new South Sudanese Ministry of Education on developing an Education Sector Strategic Plan, which will detail plans for enhancing the English language capacity of the education system with close regard to conflict sensitivity[2]. In order for a social network analysis to be feasible and productive, more information would need to be provided by this partnership about how the Plan envisions spreading English teaching resources. Documents currently available point to an ad hoc system, in which various NGO’s and Agencies have offered technical assistance sporadically. Unfortunately, South Sudan’s low levels of school enrollment and serious lack of infrastructure for schooling (which are emphasized in Marc Sommers’ book, Islands of Education, Schooling, Civil War and the Southern Sudanese) mean that an ad hoc system for improving English capacity is very likely to miss large portions of the population.

To start off on an equitable basis, the Government/international community could identify existing social network structures among the South Sudanese that could serve as useful channels for spreading English to those who may otherwise be left out. Beyond a hierarchical approach to English training (which may be seen as favoring a particular tribe, or fostering a new, elite class that has access to the international community), a social network analysis would allow us new ways to envision spreading language, and could consider utilizing the pre-existing network of trade routes. Once large markets are identified and trade routes are mapped, the next step would be to use a SNA to gauge how well connected the people/groups frequenting these markets are (and thus how likely to pass on newly acquired language skills). To measure this, it would be important to consider the following centrality measures:

· Degree Centrality: those markets/meeting centers that have the most trade routes to the most other markets/meeting centers

· Betweenness: those markets/meeting centers that the most people pass through to reach others

To gain a more complete understanding of how useful these trade centers could be as focal points for English training, a survey (or potentially a simple desk study) could address the following questions:

· How often do certain people/groups pass through the trade center?

· What language do they currently communicate in?

· How many different trade centers do they travel to?

· How long do they typically stay at a particular trade center?

· How much do they interact with people from different regions at the trade center?

Of course, once these measures have been studied, there remain many practical concerns, including the level of pre-existing institutional capacity to provide English training, and presence of teachers in the area. To ensure equitability, it would also be important to consider how the existing network of trade routes may already exclude particular groups, which could include particular income level, ethnic group, or gender bias. However, knowledge of how people throughout the country are actually interacting, combined with an understanding of the above factors, would be a very useful step in identifying key areas for spreading English quickly through a framework other than the flawed school system.

[1] Ahmed Gumaa Siddiek, “Language and Education as Factors of Sustainable Relation between the Northern and Southern Sudan Post-Secession,” Research Journal of International Studies, no. 17 (November 2010): 68-87.

[2] “Why Education Will Foster Stability in an Independent South Sudan” (UNESCO, IIEP, July 9, 2011).

SNA of a US Embassy

2011-10-23T18:10:00.001-04:00

The American staff at US Embassies is in constant flux since Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) are assigned to one embassy for two to four years. On the other hand, the Locally Employed Staff (LES) at the embassies is comprised of local citizens who retain their posts for many years. Diplomacy is based on building and maintaining relationships, and networks of relationships, so how are these relationships perpetuated with such consistent and frequent turnover of FSOs? Incoming FSOs are dependent upon their predecessors leaving detailed notes of their knowledge and contacts as well as the information provided by the LES as they learn about their new post. Additionally, new FSOs must be introduced to the networks outside the embassy and within in order to be successful diplomats. Due to the dichotomic relationship of LES and FSOs – with LES having large amounts of information and access to social networks, a social network analysis of a US embassy could be particularly insightful and helpful. The built-in high turnover rate adds an additional point of interest for a social network analysis of such a traditionally hierarchical organization.

An SNA of an embassy would have to pass approval by the State Department and the ambassador at the targeted embassy. Once approved, the SNA could be conducted through use of a survey posted online. In the survey it would be extremely important to use directed ties.

Since diplomacy is based on relationships, a survey would need to include communication questions on two different levels:

1) How often do you turn to this person for information?

2) How often do you turn to this person for introductions to others within the embassy?

3) How often do you turn to this person for introductions to others outside the embassy?

Attribute questions:

1) FSO or LES

2) Rank (GS level)

3) Gender

4) Track (Management, Economic, Political, Public Diplomacy, Consular)

5) Length of time at post

Such an analysis could answer, and bring up, many questions. We assume that the FSOs are turning to the LES for information, but to what extent is that true? Who are the brokers or bottlenecks? Who are the bridges? How does length of service at post affect a person’s connectivity in the network? Are the tracks very isolated from one another? Do the FSOs and LES have sufficient contact? It would also be important to see how gender affects interactions.

Is the Occupy Wall Street message becoming lost online?

2011-10-23T17:02:00.002-04:00

This article from the BBC discusses the positive and negative effects of social media on the Occupy Wall Street movement. It brings up the positive point of social media acting as a tool to connect groups who otherwise would not have been in a network and also the lack of a coordinated message due to the non-hierarchical system and each "node's" access to social media outlets.

After the Revolution: Using SNA to try and understand what happens next

2011-10-23T16:29:00.002-04:00

This past year the world was held captive by how activists in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya used social networks to mobilize and organize against their governments. The Arab Spring shouldn’t be interpreted as a movement towards modernity by a backwards and oppressed people but as what Alain Badiou calls an event —a previously unexpected moment which allows all kinds of opportunities while creating new problems and challenges (see his writings Being and Event and Logic of Worlds). Perhaps new dictators will emerge, or new Islamist movements (which have become the specters haunting the liberal West) but other possibilities also co-exist in the chaotic present. In the Arab Spring’s initial phase, in the moment of the event, we observe the successful deployment of networks to develop and present a positive and truthful alternative to the reactionary message of the governing elite. The world saw many groups (or sub-networks) join together under a common goal to help remove these regimes from power—students, unionists, lawyers, teachers, human rights activists, and online dissidents (http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38379/). Beyond both constructing and promoting an alternative message, using few resources, networks served as a medium to mobilize and coordinate resistance, both peaceful and violent.

But it appears when the moment has passed and the event has occurred, the online social persona which was the public face of change loses its influence and its voice as a force for social cohesion. Focus is lost, anarchy rises and, as in Egypt senseless and unproductive violence begins, as evidenced by attacks against the Coptic minority. This leads us to ask what should the role of networks be after the event, can it be repurposed as a force for social cohesion, can it evolve ahead of the populace which it mobilized, or is it the fate of such an online voice to be overtaken and made irrelevant by the second and following acts of social transformation.

Social Network Analysis might be able to provide some insight into the above question as well as providing the international community (both NGOs and governments) with an understanding of what will happen next and how to be most useful and helpful in helping to prevent countries from falling into anarchy.

Information Sources:

In some sense information is both abundant and hard to come by. Communications and messages between individuals will probably be the easiest to come by – looking at tweets, facebook messages, youtube media, blogs, emails, phone records etc. However, it is important to note that even in this area information will be lacking – for instance, in person communications and group meetings which in some cases could solidify connections and trust. Finding attribute data and determining which sub-network an individual affiliates with might be more difficult – since activists have had to keep their identities secret for security reasons.

Methodology:

Identifying characteristics of group members

a. Role: Does the individual post original content, or re-post information to forward the message on? Does the individual play the role of spokesperson in the international arena (interviewed by foreign news organizations)?

b. Age

c. Type of Employment, lack of employment?

d. Type of education?

e. Socio-economic class

f. Ethnic/Religious group/Race

Note: Items b-f will help identify the population make-up of the network. Is it made-up of mostly youth? Persecuted ethnic or religious groups? Large support from the entire population as a whole?

g. Language skills/ability (does the individual have the ability to communicate with people outside of their network/country?

Identifying characteristics or an issue network of each sub-network and then overlaying them.

a. Why did the sub network decide to join the greater network?

b. What is the ranking in order of importance their goals? i.e. once one goal is achieved what will be their next priority – and how does that relate to the goals (and their importance) of the other sub-networks

c. Ability of the sub-network to access resources to influence decisions regarding their issues

In a perfect world, a network analysis would have to be done on the network as a whole and on the individual sub-networks. Identifying the key influencers within each sub-network and then the bridges between each sub-network. Some questions that would need to be answered to accomplish this is:

a. Who does the person interact with both in their sub-network and sub-network?

b. Direction of ties- Are they reciprocated or just in one direction (look at this both within an individual’s sub-network and in interactions between sub-networks)? Are the leaders of the sub-networks also bridging between other sub-networks or are these different individuals?

2) Position in the network

a. Who has the most number of ties in the network? What role(s) do these people perform?

b. Who is tied to the most influential people in the network (at both the sub-network level and network as a whole)?

Several important network measures include:

1) Ego networks- Who are the key personnel in terms of facilitating these connections?

2) Network distance- This is important in terms of establishing how ties between sub-networks may be organized. In order to send communication and information, how many people does this transmission require?

3) Organizational holes – where is it most likely that the larger network will start breaking down? How can this be prevented? How large is the hole and can it easily be “patched”.

The above is just a start in trying to understand what happens after what Alain Badiou calls the event, and how, if at all possible, now and in the future after the “event” has occurred to prevent a country from slipping into anarchy.

Prof. Tunnard's Social Network Analysis and Social Media Classes

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Social Networking Service

Contents

TweetDeck - Efficiently manage your private and business networks

The Application of Social Network Analysis to Team Sports

Influence of Social Networks on Democracy

The Influence of Social Networks on Corporate Finance decisions

Companies Are Erecting In-House Social Networks

A CEO perspective on the business value of internal social networks

Facebook will not be the only player

Are social networks good or bad?

Start-Ups With Larger Social Networks Receive More Venture Capital

How Effective Social Media is for Small Businesses

Social business strategy – an example @ DELL

The risks of Social Networking sites

Value of Social Network -- A Large-Scale Analysis on Network Structure Impact to Financial Revenue of Information Technology Consultants

Relationship between Facebook and Academics

Social network in South Korea

The network of global corporate control

Crisis Management using Social Media

Working in the Connected World: Social Capital — The KillerApp for HR in the 21st Century

Social Networking in HealthCare Sector

Social Network Management Enhances

Risks versus rewards

10 Social Networking Tips For CIOs

The Facebook Nation

Marginals vs Centrals

Social Media and Hierarchy of Needs

Initial Findings of the Consulting Firm Case Study

Social Media – Innovation Prize 2011 for Deutsche Bank

Bank of America’s Google Plus Page Appears ‘Brandjacked’

From Social Networks to Collaboration Networks -IDEAS FOR LEADERS

Social networking intro

Leveraging Social Networking for Social Media Marketing

Social Networking for Small Businesses

Will the Future of Social Business Networking be Google, Facebook?

Will the Future of Social Business Networking be Google, Facebook?

Social Networking as an Extension of Google Apps

More Than Just Numbers

New Trends in Social Networking

Article about Supporting Knowledge Creation and Sharing in Social Networks

Article about social Network and knowledge sharing in organizations

Six degrees of separation? Think again

Possibilities for Using Social Network Analysis to Connect African Scholars to the Larger Academic World

Proposed Social Network Analysis of Rural Healthcare Providers in India

For Incoming I.B.M. Chief, Self-Confidence is Rewarded

SNA of Networks of Libyan Expatriate Organizations

Peace One Day?

Ushering peace: Using SNA to nip violent crisis in the bud

SNA of AMIDEAST NGO's Organization

Proposed Social Network Analysis of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council in Central America

Mapping Social Movements and Political Parties in Egypt

Knowledge Network Analysis of DC-Area National Security Think Tanks to Inform Foundational Grantmaking Strategy

Social Networks and Human Terrain

Social Networks and Human Terrain Analysis

Using SNA to win Political Campaigns

Tweeting terrorism - following extremists in cyber space

[1] Valenta, Thomas, Social Networks and Health: Models, Methods, and Applications, Oxford Press 2010

Using SNA to spread knowledge of a language

SNA of a US Embassy

Is the Occupy Wall Street message becoming lost online?

After the Revolution: Using SNA to try and understand what happens next