SNA All Star: Kathleen M. Carley

Kathleen M. Carley is currently a Professor in the School of Computer Science in the department at the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University. She also holds teaching appointments at the Social and Decision Sciences Department of the H. John Heinz III College and at the Tepper School of Business, Engineering and Public Policy Department. Professor Carley specializes in organization theory, dynamic network analysis, social networks, multi-agent systems and computational social science, adaptation and evolution, text mining, and the impact of telecommunication technologies and policy on communication, information diffusion, disease contagion and response within and among groups particularly in disaster or crisis situations.

Further, Professor Carley is the Director of Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS), a university wide interdisciplinary center that brings together network analysis, computer science and organization science with over 25 members (faculty and staff) and has a funded training program for Ph.D. students. She and her team at the Center have developed infrastructure tools for analyzing large scale dynamic networks and various multi-agent simulation systems including tools  such as ORA (toolkit for analyzing and visualizing multi-dimensional networks), AutoMap (extracts networks from texts and cross-classifies them) BioWar (city-scale network based model to understand the spread of disease and illness due to natural epidemics, chemical spills, biological attacks) and DyNet (covert networks), among others.

Additionally, she is the founding co-editor with Al. Wallace of the journal Computational Organization Theory and has co-edited several books in the computational organizations and dynamic network area, such as Behavioral Modeling and Simulation, From Individuals to Societies (Kathleen M. Carley, et al., 2008, Greg L. Zacharias, Jean MacMillan and Susan B. Van Hemel, editors, National Academies Press, Washington, DC) and Modeling Community Containment for Pandemic Influenza: A Letter Report (Kathleen M. Carley, et al., 2006, Sallie Keller-McNulty, Kirstie L. Bellman, Washington, DC: National Academy Press).

http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/bios/carley/carley.html

http://www.epp.cmu.edu/people/bios/carley.html

http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/index.php

SNA All-Star: Steve Borgatti

Steve Borgatti is a leading researcher and practitioner of social networks analysis. He is currently a professor at the University of Kentucky, editor or on the editorial boards of major social network and organization journals, as well as the publisher of well-known social network analysis software, such as UCINET and NetDraw. He collaborates with Roberta Chase, his wife, on projects such as software publishing and organizing the International Network for Social Network Analysis, of which he was a 2-term president.

Borgatti’s recent book is Analyzing Social Networks, written with Martin G. Everett and Jeffrey C. Johnson and published in 2013.  He has done extensive research in social networks from a variety of different perspectives, from social media networks, neurological professional networks, industry and organizational structures, networks of drug users, and counter-terrorism concerns. He has also contributed methods and tools for data and network visualization through various publications and software development. Finally, he has contributed thoughts on the ethics of mapping and analyzing social networks, through his Toward Ethical Guidelines for Network Research in Organizations, published in 2005.

Importantly, Borgatti enjoys reading science fiction and bowling.

http://gatton.uky.edu/vitas/BorgattiS.pdf

http://www.steveborgatti.com/

SNA All-Star: Frank Harary

Frank Harary became a math instructor at the University of Michigan in 1948 having journeyed from an interest in theoretical physics towards pure mathematics. As he was promoted through the ranks of professorship his research interest kept shifting and in addition to his position in the Department of Mathematics, Harary took on a research associate role in the Institute of Social Research in 1950 joining Leon Festinger and Doriwn Cartwright who had moved part of Kurt Lewin’s original research center to Michigan from MIT. 

An international authority in graph theory, Harary grew increasingly interested in applying graph theory to social relations and structural concepts. Together with Cartwright he authored a key paper on the uses of graph theory for expanding upon Heider’s theory of balance (Cartwright and Harary, 1956). Cartwright and Harary used graph theory to develop a generalization of Heider's theory of balance with the help of concepts from the mathematical theory of linear graphs. 

They translated Heider’s diagrams and language into graph theoretic terms and summarized them visually. They thus were able to make key alterations and extensions to balance theory - Heider's theory was originally intended to refer only to cognitive structures of an individual person while Harary and Cartwright proposed that the definition of balance may be used generally in describing configurations of many different sorts, such as communication networks, power systems, sociometric structures, systems of orientations, or perhaps neural networks - and thus contributed important early advances to the field of SNA. 

The use of graph theory for developing formal definitions for concepts such as cliques, centrality and balance resulted in significant early progress in SNA on both theoretical and methodological grounds.  

Entry is based on Prell "Social Network Analysis" and Cartwright and Harary "Structural balance: a generalization of Heider's theory" 

David McCandless' network of states and groups in the Middle East

Mother Jones highlighted David McCandless' illustration of relationships between various states, armed groups, and power players in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.  His network shows the level of friendship or animosity between states and groups and also identifies whether these nodes are Sunni, Shia, or non-muslim.

The interactive version on McCandless' own site is interesting to play with and helps to tease out the complexity of relationships in the region. Clicking on each node, for instance, takes you to that specific node's connections and is sometimes accompanied by a small description of each relationship in the network.

You can even check out the data he used through a link to a public Google spreadsheet.

This network visualization sent me down a rabbit hole of other analysis of relationships in the Middle East, including this relatively bizarre one from Slate.

Best,
Emma Fredieu

SNA All-Star: Dr. Keith Hampton

Dr. Keith Hampton is currently an Associate Professor at Rutgers University in the School of Communication and Information and an affiliate member of the graduate faculty in Sociology. He teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in digital media, communication & society, and social networks. His most notable and recent research focuses on the nature of social networks and how they influence or change urban environments.

Dr. Hampton’s contributions to the SNA field include combining heavy sociological analysis of how modern media and technology intersect with the established SNA paradigms. His work is highly collaborative and involves input from both faculty and graduate students. He has used data from a wide variety of sources – from telephone surveys, to field observations, to census numbers.

Through empirical and longitudinal studies of how technology affects social interactions and well-being, Dr. Hampton focuses on several different yet interconnected themes such as pervasive awareness, social interaction in public spaces, and social media & well-being. His research on Pervasive Awareness is particularly interesting, to me, as it studies “possible outcomes associated with the pervasive nature of social media”* The study aims to examine how “pervasive exposure to information from people’s personal network of friends and family, combined with the anywhere-anytime accessibility of social ties, is likely to affect outcomes”* related to psychological health and the formation of an individual’s opinion.  Perhaps, the larger one’s social network the more distracted or stressed this individual can become?

Another element to his research encompasses the urban environment and social life. Many of his projects examine intersections between public spaces, isolation, and new mobile technologies. One of Dr. Hampton’s projects is an update of American urbanist and organizational analyst William Whyte’s 1980 study titled “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces;” Hampton modernized the research model by observing seven wireless internet abled public parks in 4 cities across North America to identify “how mobile devices augment local interactions and people’s social networks.”*

In the course of his career thus far, Dr. Hampton has received numerous awards and recognitions for his contribution to the fields of sociology, international communication, and urban studies, among others.

    

*Quotes taken directly from Professor Hampton’s public webpage. Click here to visit Dr. Keith Hampton's Website. 

The debate over laptops and cellphones in classrooms

Over the past few weeks, the Fletcher faculty has been having an online debate about disruption caused by the use of laptops and phones in the classroom. It is clear that there is no easy yes-or-no answer.

Earlier today, I sent my colleagues an article by Clay Shirky--one of the country’s most influential thinkers, writers, and teachers on the Internet and society. He has has written a thoughtful and compelling piece on why he has just asked the students in his social media seminar to put their laptops away during class. He’s the last person you’d imagine would advocate this.

Read his arguments, and come to your own conclusion. Click on the post title to see the article.

Social Networks, Entertainment or Business Activity?

Today world is full of Social Networks; it is incredible how the Y and C generations are so dependent and addicted to their social networks, it has transformed the marketing industry and the way companies reach new segments.

It’s important to understand that social networks born with the purpose of maintain contact with friends and as entertainment. Facebook was definitely the first network that really had a big impact in the whole world, even though it was not the first social network in the market.

Soon, companies realize the potential of social media to reach big masses with their advertisements and that’s when the activity of Social Networks started to look profitable for organizations.

Here is where I come to the picture; my family operates it’s own business in Mexico and few years ago we started to wonder how can we take advantage of Social Networks.

My family business is a 25-year-old company dedicated to the distribution of stationery and office products in all the country (similar to Staples). Obviously we do not posses unlimited resources, time and access to information, but we still want to create a competitive advantage using all the channels we have at our disposal.

The challenge is how to increase our market share and build better and stronger relationships with our current customers using social media.

In order to start developing a marketing strategy we need to acquire data about our most profitable and loyal customers, and the most potential buyers that we would like to attract, we would need to know where they buy, how large are their budgets for the products that we offer, what are the things that they value the most (price, on time delivery, quality, etc.), all these information is not so easy to get, however, through social networks analysis we could identify the connections of our potential customers and use our network to reach them.

The most important measure that we would need is to find a connection between our company and the buyer of the companies that we want to reach, finding these persons it’s not so easy because sometimes there are confidentiality clauses that other companies cannot break, but once we could have contact with these buyers we could start to build relationships and hopefully start doing business to increase our customer portfolio.

The Social Network Analysis will definitely play an important role in accomplish this challenge we had set up, through this analysis we would be able to identify key persons and companies, we would be able to receive customer feedback and complaints more directly and faster from our customers in order to fix or areas of improvement, and we would be able to retain our customers now that competitions is so strong in our industry.

Ricardo Contreras Tinoco 

Can Social Network Analysis Be Implemented For Social Change?

In our rapidly changing world, traditionally effective marketing strategies have to be adapted to meet the needs of a very diverse set of demographics.  This is particularly true when dealing with the underserved markets at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid.  How do you penetrate a market that struggles with low literacy rates, lack of trust, and lack of access to traditional media channels?  I believe that social network analysis is the first step.

The dynamics in many slums are based on relationships and unspoken hierarchies.  Following the advice of key community influencers are how many people make their purchasing or lifestyle decisions. The problem is, how do you identify these influencers?

Assuming that money is no object, we would need to survey community members in order to find out where the social dynamics gravitate.  This is particularly difficult to do because, unlike other surveys, you need a significantly larger sample size in order to get an accurate picture.  This is because there are many networks present, and you can'r rely on confidence intervals to determine your levels of accuracy in this case.

For the purposes of this scenario, let's assume that we were able to get an 80% response rate.  This is probably extremely ambitious, but it's always best to aim high.  This survey asked the respondents who they socialized with, who they took advice from, who do they respect, where do they live, occupation, etc.  All of this information will be useful when mapping out the social analysis map later.

Once all of this information has been compiled and the connections have been made, the data would need to be studied.  First, it would be important to determine which people have the highest eigenvector centrality for both "respect" and "advice".  This will identify the key influencers.

Afterwards, it would be helpful to try to find any correlations between those with high eigenvector centrality and any of the other descriptors mentioned (age, occupation, address, etc).  This is important because it helps to answer the question of "why?" rather than just who.  If you can determine WHY someone is a key influencer, you can create a better communication plan because you better understand the needs and wants of a community.

All of this is the first step in crafting a marketing strategy in an urban slum.  Once you have been able to map out the social networks and perform an in-depth analysis, you can make an informed decision about how to move forward with your business strategy.  This will also prevent you from rushing in blind to a potentially hostile business situation.

Can social network analysis identify key players in illicit drug markets?

Pandemic in the illicit drug markets have been problems that every city faces for the last decade. Difficulties to gain information and how the network works are the biggest challenge for officials. With growing social network user, Studies have been shown that with the right data, Social network analysis can be used to track the link between individuals that are involved in the network.

Getting the right data is difficult due to the discreetness of the network itself; therefore the right official needs to be involved to gather data such as:

• ·      ‘Street’ Ethnographic data
• ·      Connection of jailed drug traffickers
• ·      Wiretaps or police records
• ·      Court transcripts
• ·      Phone logs
• ·      Bank logs

Some of the data’s mentioned above can be obtained easily but I believe information from drug traffickers behind bars is crucial to make legit connection.

The SNA will help us to establish the link (ties) between all individuals (nodes) that are involved (usually they belong to a certain group – cell), how each cell communicate, venue of laboratory, the leaders in the areas, and last but not least the top of the food chain or the ‘King Pin’.

Most important network measure will be the role of each node, where they stand in the hierarchy and the closeness of their connection. (Density and centrality depends on data and accuracy of data)

From one example bellow, it shows that each cell is not or not likely to connect with each other, that means if one cell is compromised, the leader can start another cell without compromising the whole network. 

                                            Example of 'Illicit drug markets network map'

SNA will help police official to learn the network, identify key players, and even pin point exact location of Labs and operation. 

Final Assignment: Using SNA to improve the hiring process

A few years ago a background check was the only resource to check an employee's obscure secrets. Nowadays, social networks have replaced this obsolete practice. Networks like Facebook and LinkedIn tell you more about a candidate than you may want to know.

The problem is that there is a los of easy information to gather out there and companies might not know how and when to use it correctly.

Every career services lecture I've ever attended, made it clear: no picture, no religion, no sexual option on your CV; it's ilegal. Protected information they say. Protected?

However, even though it's illegal to ask a candidate for this information, social networks facilitate the task. What you need to do is receive the candidate's resume and start using SNA analysis to your advantage.

By using networks like Facebook, you can find out how the candidate looks, does he/she likes to party? Is he/she gay or straight? Is she pregnant and will I have to incur in extra expenses? or any other piece of information. Also, focusing and measuring the types of relationships the candidate has, might let you know what other assets the candidate has. Go to LinkedIn, check the candidate's profile and see what conncections he/she has. Maybe the social network he/she carries might bring more added value to your business than the skills he/she posses.

However, (this is the pro bono advice) never use social networks as your last resource to make the decision. It's perfectly legal if you use a public information prior to the interviews. Nevertheless, if you have already interviewed the candidate and at the end you find out something that doesn't please you, you can't use it. This is were it gets illegal.