Complexity and Social Networks Blog

22 September 2009

Sorry for my absence .....

I'm back, and promise to keep you entertained and informed.
I will also promise to cut the incessant barking!

(Of course, it's not really MY blog .... I am only a tiny little part. And I thank David for his patience.)

SW

By Stan Wasserman | 6:39 PM | Comments (1)

Future Networks Conference at MIT

For those of you in the Boston area, there will be a one day conference at MIT on Future Networks - Economy, Energy, Health. A lot of the local networks researchers are talking here, particularly those with more of a computer science bent.

Ben Shneidernman from the University of Maryland is giving the keynote, and friends of the blog Marta Gonzalez and Cesar Hidalgo will also be speaking (along with myself). Hope to see many of you there.

By Ben Waber | 2:32 PM | Comments (0)

21 September 2009

Communities in Networks

Uncovering the "community" structure of social networks has a long history, but communities play a pivotal role in almost all networks across disciplines. Intuitively, one can think of a network community as consisting of a group of nodes that are relatively densely connected to each other but sparsely connected to other dense groups of nodes. Communities are important because they are thought to have a strong bearing on functional units in many networks. So, for example, communities in social networks can correspond to different social groups, such as family, whereas web pages dealing with a given subject tend to form topical communities.

The concept is simple enough, but it turns out that coming up with precise mathematical definitions and algorithms for community detection is one of the most challenging problems in network science. Recently, a lot of the research in this area has been done using ideas from statistical physics, which has an arsenal of tools and concepts to tackle the problem. Unfortunately (but understandably) relatively few non-physicists like to read statistical physics papers.

Together with my colleagues Mason Porter (Oxford University) and Peter Mucha (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), we thought it would be useful to let others take a peek at some of this work. In an effort to put in context some of the hundreds of papers, we recently compiled an introductory review on some of our favorite approaches to community detection. While there are excellent existing reviews, our "Communities in Networks", published by Notices of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), tries to make sense of this smorgasbord of methods and, hopefully, lets a broader audience get a flavor of this exciting field.

I hope to be making a couple of postings on community structure and community detection later on. In the meantime, you can see for yourself if we have succeeded by checking out the freely accessible article on the AMS website, or by going to arXiv or SSRN.

The largest connected component of a coauthorship network connecting physicists who have published together on networks. Each node is colored according to community membership.

By JP Onnela | 9:40 AM | Comments (2)

20 September 2009

Upcoming "Workshop on Information in Networks"

While I am making announcements, I will also mention the upcoming Workshop on Information in Networks, taking place Sept 25-26 in NYC. This workshop, put together by Sinan Aral at NYU, pulls together a multidisciplinary all star cast of scholars in this area. A brief description from the website:

WIN is a Social Networks Summit intended to foster collaboration and to build community. The increasing availability of massive networked data is revolutionizing the scientific study of a variety of phenomena in fields as diverse as Computer Science, Economics, Physics and Sociology. Yet, while many important advances have taken place in these different communities, the dialog between researchers across disciplines is only beginning. The purpose of WIN is to bring together leading researchers studying 'information in networks' - its distribution, its diffusion, its value, and its influence on social and economic outcomes - in order to lay the foundation for ongoing relationships and to build a lasting multidisciplinary research community.

By David Lazer | 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

Welcoming a new blogger to the team: Jukka-Pekka Onnela

I am pleased to introduce a new blogger to our team: Jukka-Pekka Onnela. Jukka-Pekka has been a Fulbright-funded postdoc with me for the last year, and holds a PhD from the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, in Complex Systems. He was lead author on a paper in PNAS on which I was a coauthor, "Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication networks," and has done a wide array of thought provoking research on various (usually human) complex systems. It is a pleasure to welcome him to the netgov blog.

By David Lazer | 11:28 AM | Comments (1)

10 September 2009

Learning from Chemical Traces

A few weeks ago a really fantastic study got a lot of press about how researchers found that 90% of US bills have trace amounts of cocaine on them. This got me thinking about some of the other interesting currency studies that have been done.

Where is George? comes to mind as another brilliantly designed study. Researchers stamped thousands of bills with a URL where people who received the bill could go and enter its current location. The researchers got a huge number of responses, allowing them to use bill mobility patterns to approximate human mobility patterns. Of course with the recent availability of high quality cell phone and sensor data this may not be the best data collection method in the future, but at the very least it's a great study design.

But the cocaine study got me thinking: what else can we learn about people's habits from chemical traces on bills? Of course the reason cocaine can be detected is that it binds to the green dye in money, but a large number of other compounds would likely also bind to this dye. Can you learn about fast food consumption from bill traces? Could you gauge the "stress level" of the country by measuring the amount of certain sweat compounds?

You can potentially get this data from other sources, but often it's hard to get a large enough cross section of society to get a broad enough picture. By combining analysis of these physical traces with digital traces, we can get closer to having a complete view of how our society is behaving.

By Ben Waber | 3:17 PM | Comments (4)

14 July 2009

The complexity of Government 2.0

In today's post, I would like to address three issues related to Government 2.0: transparency, citizenship and agenda hi-jacking.

First, while we read a lot about transparency, it is easier said than done. For example, transparency levels may be highly dependent on the government context and its potential (unintended) impact on either discloser or public behavior--whether citizens or corporations. Second, when participation is emphasized--whether online of offline--, we need to revisit our understanding of citizenship today and in the future. Thirdly, political agendas/policies may be "hi-jacked" by bottom-up Internet-based approaches of proposing alternatives which also relates back to the question of citizenship and legitimacy.

Government 2.0 is the flavor of the year. Other terms now being introduced are WikiGovernment, Collaborative Government, Information Government or the U.S. administration's Open Government. While the terms might differ and the authors that introduce them slightly vary in their description and priorities, all of them intend to convey the same ideas: participation, collaboration, transparency and technology jointly allow for a new form of government and governance. Certain things are here to stay; others will pass out of fashion quickly.

The following quotes may illustrate my concerns:

A memo released by the White House, called federal agency heads to "upgrading the capacity of regulatory agencies for using the Internet to become more open, efficient, and responsive". The National Performance Review (NPR) recommended to "[u]se information technology and other techniques to increase opportunities for early, frequent, and interactive public participation during the rulemaking process and to increase program evaluation efforts."

This sounds familiar. However, the White House memo dates back to Dec 17, 1999 and NPR's recommendation back to September 1993. Therefore, policies that connect openness and responsiveness to the potential of technology have been around for over 40 years in government. Some think that eGovernment is dead. But its ideas are quite alive; especially thoughts on eDemocracy seem to finally become reality. eGovernment (the internal/external use of technology in government) does not contradict Government 2.0 anyways. On a 50.000 foot level the use of social media in government is the use of technology.The envisioned transformation requires patience and long-term support from policy makers because government is a complex ecosystem which is resilient to change.

Along these lines, I recently read an interesting blog post (Steve Radick) which reminded me of a post I contributed to this blog (why government is ahead in web 2.0 in 2008.

Of course we should not let the past constrain our vision about the future. Yet, the past may prevent us from being overly optimistic or in other words, overly disappointed when all things envisioned don't become reality.

Transparency
The Obama administration's agenda on transparency (the latest move was making information on government IT spendingavailable) is amazing but these policies as a form of regulation are not new to government. For an overview of transparency initiatives and regulations visit freedominfo.org, wobsite.be or Wikipedia. The European Commission also introduced a directive on the re-use of public sector information in 2003. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get a full overview and understanding of the level of progress of the latter in EU Member States. Consequently, it should openly be discussed how the level of transparency of a government or any of its agencies can be measured.

While Vivek Kundra agrees in principle that all public government data should be online, he also cautions that the reality is government data sits in more than 10,000 different systems, many of them written in old programing languages or are still locked in dusty paper archives. Accordingly, eGovernment is not dead. Without the appropriate infrastructure (interoperability standards, electronic records management, enterprise architecture) projects such as data.gov can only achieve parts of their true potential.

In general, for transparency we have two primary actors: the discloser and the user. There are many ways for discloser to provide less than complete information or hide important information by providing excessive amounts of information. Placing data in the public domain does not guarantee that it will be used or used in the intended way. Data may be ignored, approached with indifference, misunderstood or misused. For example, data may make it easier for special interest groups to lobby for their own interests. Transparency activities are complex and need full commitment of a government body.

Finally, government and politics are based on the type and flow of information. Transparency policies, social media and the influx of "believers of openness" in government have slightly altered the process. That may have two effects.

On the one hand, it has become more difficult to contain information. At the same time the need to monitor the "global thought stream" is increasing to be able to proactively react to emerging "crisis". These continue to be defined by traditional media (tv, radio, press) once they declare some Internet trend "news" (Note the change: Digital collective action can quickly lead to more media coverage; past: media leading to collective action).

On the other hand, transparency and social media could lead to even tighter confidentiality protocols and altered behaviour of elected officials. "Negative" media coverage/spin continues to be "sunlight" which government tries to avoid at all costs. A recent episode of "The Daily Show" provides a case in point.

Mainstream media also like to quote twitter messages of U.S. members of Congress and adding their spin to 140 character thoughts. Some of the early adopters still offer unique commentary. How long will this be he case?

Citizenship and Participation
Despite all the anti-American sentiment around the globe, the Obama administration has remarkably managed to export its open government policy around the globe. It spread virally through the Internet. Inspired by U.S. and UK based initiatives, individuals (early adopters) in other countries have started applying these initiatives to their national context (mostly exact copies) or supporting calls for government action ("democratization"). Numerous "experts" are presenting (mostly the same) ideas and good practice cases to government officials. Many of those officials are still struggling with the topic. For example, many are still wondering about the best way of "eParticipation" which is the current buzz.

However, there is an underlying question we need to answer that is far more complex and fundamental than eParticipation:

How do we define citizenship in an era of Government 2.0?

This requires a return to political theorists such as Aristotle, John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas as well as multi-disciplinary deliberation of what we would like citizenship to be. Because in the near future, every established form of decision making--especially on the political level--will experience collective action based on the increase of expressive capability of the Internet (Everyone can claim for a democratization of "something" pointing to the potential use of social media). In addition, the digital divide between those who are offline, those who are online and those who "live" online ("Netcitizen") continues to exist.

Similar to transparency, the opportunity to participate may simply be neglected until a true need arises. An average worker might only have 2-3 hours available per day to engage in participatory action which are competing with many other leisure activities. Consequently, there is also the issue of legitimacy of those participatory actions that were either offered by government or started by citizens.

Agenda hi-jacking
To prove my last point, I would like to draw on a current example from Europe. In November 2009, the EU Ministerial eGovernment Conference will take place in Malmoe, Sweden. It is planned to present a ministerial declaration on eGovernment in the EU for the next seven years. This declaration will be the result of back-room dealings between EU Member States (MS).

However, this year a group of people led by two companies decided to use a
social media facilitated bottom-up approach to create a declaration alongside the official one in Malmoe for eGovernment 2015 It is also their goal to get official endorsement of their version from the European Commission. As the content of the platform is openly accessibly, ideas might even find their way into the official document. The group's motivation is probably a mix of self-marketing, fascination for social media and spirit to influence policy making.

So far, 75 individuals participated in the activity. It will be interesting to see how many people will sign the declaration. It will also be interesting to see whether and when the media will pick-up the story of alternative agenda and how much pressure this will exert on policy makers. Considering the total population of 500 Mio EU citizens, legitimacy of this initiative is questionable.

Nevertheless, the EU is at a crossroads: If it does not open up more, it will further strip itself of legitimacy. Gov 2.0 type activities provide one avenue to strengthen the EU and its institutions.

Finally, with regards to research, I see two issues. First, old and new research from various disciplines relating to Government 20 is not connected. Second, researchers can hardly keep pace with the current output of Government 2.0 policies and projects being implemented.

By Alexander Schellong | 12:15 AM

19 June 2009

Reality Mining Workshop at AOM

I wanted let everyone know about a workshop at this year's Academy of Management Conference that I'm organizing with Lynn Wu. I've posted the call for participation below. Hope to see you there!

Reality Mining Workshop at the 2009 Academy of Management Annual Meeting
Saturday, August 8, 8 - 10 AM

In the last decade sensors have become cheaper, faster, and more ubiquitous, enabling automatic collection of data at the millisecond-level time scale in a technique called Reality Mining. The Reality Mining workshop will focus on discussing what new management paradigms can be enabled with this technique, as well as how researchers can immediately use sensing tools to augment their research.

To give participants a better `feel' for the technology and its potential usefulness, we will arrange for participants to have the option of wearing Sociometric Badges: name badges with electronics that continuously measure face-to-face interaction parameters (e.g., who is talking, who is nearby).

Reality Mining research was described by the International Conference on Information Systems 2008 awards committee as "opening a new area of Management Information Systems research." This has generated a large volume of interest in Reality Mining techniques, which is only expected to build as the technology behind this methodology matures. Come and learn about this groundbreaking new research methodology.

To express your interest in participating, please e-mail the organizers at reality-workshop@media.mit.edu.

Organizers:
Benjamin N. Waber, MIT Media Laboratory
Lynn Wu, MIT Sloan School of Management

Confirmed Discussants:
Sinan Aral, NYU
Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT
Peter Gloor, MIT
David Lazer, Harvard
Alex "Sandy" Pentland, MIT

Workshop website: http://web.media.mit.edu/~bwaber/aom_workshop/

By Ben Waber | 10:26 AM

18 June 2009

Talk: Impact of Social Media on You

In line with David Gibson's recent post I would like to recommend watching the following video from a talk of Clay Shirky (NYU) at the U.S. Department of State on June 17th. Its a great summary for government and enterprise executives to better understand the issue and impact of the Internet, social media and the emerging networking society on their organizations/work.

There is a follow up interview with Shirky on the emerging events in Iran and the role of social media.

Source: World Bank

By Alexander Schellong | 6:17 PM

16 June 2009

When social networking matters more than social networks

Yet again, social networking platforms seem to be playing a critical role in enabling social unrest--now in Iran. Some of us in the network analysis community are probably ambivalent, given all the trouble we go to in reminding people that there were social networks before the internet. Yet it seems that technology is making all the difference. Also troubling--someone tell me if I'm wrong--is the fact that network position, as traditionally conceived, doesn't seem so important when anyone at all can subscribe to an online information source, and when information that fails to reach you through one channel will probably find its way to you through another.

One can study online networking incrementally, by asking how people use the internet to service social ties and perhaps expand their number and reach. But the case of Iran, and before that Moldava, suggests that our baseline assumption, that people are not tied unless we find strong evidence to the contrary (e.g., socializing), might have to be turned on its head. It's not obvious to me that traditional social network analysis will take us very far in understanding such situations, and social movement perspectives might do only slightly better. At the risk of seeming too excitable, we might be witnessing a social discontinuity comparable to the Industrial Revolution, and equally demanding of new theories. That should be exciting to social scientists, but given that we're still puzzling through the French Revolution one wonders how long it'll take us to get our act together.

By David Gibson | 10:19 PM